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As Europe’s sustainability reporting rules face intense political scrutiny, a new analysis by Frank Bold provides timely evidence that the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is already driving meaningful change in practice.
In reviewing the first wave of reports by 100 large European companies, the study finds that the CSRD has done what it set out to do: push sustainability reporting beyond box-ticking, provide useful data to users and turn it into a genuine management tool for navigating climate and social risks.
Across Europe, companies are beginning to show a more structured and credible approach to sustainability.
These shifts mark a cultural change in corporate reporting, where sustainability disclosures are no longer a mere PR exercise but a strategic tool to understand critical challenges, from energy and resource use to climate uncertainty, value-chain resilience, and how companies manage them.
While the first year of CSRD implementation led to noticeable improvements, challenges remain.
Particularly against the backdrop of the ongoing Omnibus simplification debate, such gaps and feedback underline why continued guidance—not deregulation—is essential to turn disclosure into effective risk management.
The research provides clear recommendations to policymakers and businesses on how to simplify reporting without weakening requirements, focusing on strategic and useful information.
The release of this report comes amid fierce discussions over the Omnibus simplification package and the rollback of corporate sustainability legislation. Following weeks of negotiations that ignored requests from businesses, investors and even the European Central Bank, the EU Parliament will hold a key vote in the JURI Committee on Monday 13 October.
Proposals to dilute reporting and due diligence requirements risk undoing the progress achieved in just one reporting cycle. Misguided simplification efforts create uncertainty for companies that have already invested in improving their systems.
By limiting availability of critical data the EU will be compromising on its competitive edge. To scale up clean tech and advance EU's strategic goals in energy efficiency or resource autonomy, access to high-quality, large-scale data is essential. The CSRD secures this information flow from companies.
This is critical for the EU to strengthen industrial competitiveness, counter China’s lead in manufacturing and green tech, and withstand pressure from the U.S and other oil-rich countries to maintain dependence on fossil fuel imports.
As this report shows, reducing sustainability reporting to a compliance cost misses its value as a strategic asset for Europe’s industrial and geopolitical strength.
This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
Following months of negotiations in the European Parliament, the amendments to the CSRD proposal have been approved by the JURI committee this Tuesday 15th of March.
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) proposal stipulates that EFRAG should be responsible for carrying out a due process to draft, consult and deliver EU sustainability standards for adoption by the European Commission. On 1 March, the EFRAG General Assembly appointed the members of the EFRAG Sustainability Reporting Board, which will be responsible for all sustainability reporting positions of EFRAG, including technical advice to the European Commission on draft EU Sustainability Reporting Standards and related amendments.
Dear Members of the European Parliament, In the next couple of weeks, various committees in the European Parliament will vote on their proposals to reform the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). In view of that, the co-signing organisations are calling for broadening the scope of the companies to be covered by the new rules by including all listed SMEs, as well as non-listed SMEs operating in high-risk sectors, subject to proportional rules.
