Vereinigung zur Mitwirkung an der Entwicklung des Bilanzrechts für Familiengesellschaften e.V.
VMEBF
Mitwirkung an der Entwicklung des Bilanzrechts (inkl.
ID: 091525114461-22
Lobbying Activity
Response to European Sustainability Reporting Standards
7 Jul 2023
We welcome the adjustments made by the EU Commission in the course of publishing the draft delegated act on the ESRS. These improve the practicability and implementability of the regulations, especially for non-capital-market-oriented companies. In this context, special attention has to be paid to the rules on materiality assessment. We welcome the decision to make all disclosure requirements, apart from the disclosures required by ESRS 2, dependent on an individual materiality assessment. In line with the requirements for financial reporting, it is also important for sustainability reporting to provide stakeholders with material information and thus avoid an information overload by reporting on information that is not material. In that respect, we also consider the implementation guidance on materiality assessment, which is currently being developed, to be an important success factor for mandatory sustainability reporting and the resulting changes in companies' behaviour. However, it is unclear to us how disclosure requirements mandatory as material according to ESRS interact with the regulatory requirements of the SFDR. For example, the SFDR requires various disclosures that, according to the draft delegated act on the ESRS, are only to be disclosed if they are material as per an individual materiality assessment. As a consequence, an amendment of the SFDR would be necessary in order not to invalidate the materiality requirement for companies in the scope of the SFDR through higher-level regulation (meaning the SFDR). We also welcome the phasing-in of some of the disclosure requirements or even entire standards. However, we consider the limitation of some of the transitional regulations to companies with a maximum of 750 employees to fall too short (even though we acknowledge that the phasing-in threshold of a maximum of 750 employees in the average of the fiscal year is an improvement on the thresholds for the scope of application of the NFDR as well as the CSRD). It is true that in particular companies at the lower limit of the large corporations have to be relieved. But also larger, even capital market-oriented companies will face immense challenges from many of the new reporting requirements not least because of the sheer extent of these requirements. In this respect, from our point of view, an extension of the proposed transitional regulations to all companies would be appropriate. Should this not be an option from the Commission's point of view, we propose an extension of the transitional regulations at least to all non-capital-market-oriented companies. Even in large non-capital-market-oriented companies with more than 750 employees, structures and capacities often prevail that are de facto common in medium-sized structures, which in turn would justify an extension of the transitional rules to at least these companies. In addition, consideration should be given to extending the phase-in provisions in terms of time by 1-2 additional years in each case, at least for non-capital-market-oriented companies especially with regard to disclosure on scope 3 GHG-emissions. Furthermore, we doubt that the intended alignment with the ISSB standards can be realised by the current wording in ESRS 1, especially regarding financial materiality. We therefore suggest that the wording of chapter 3.5 of ESRS 1 in particular be reviewed in this regard.
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