Non-financial reporting

FEBIS provided a comments paper on the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting directive proposal.

The new draft proposal on Corporate Sustainability Directive (new name of the former non-financial reporting directive) was released by the European Commission in April 2021 and the consultation period on the draft was running until July 14, 2021.

This new draft aims at revamping the former non-financial reporting directive to increase its scope and push more companies to report on non-financial items.

FEBIS provided a comments paper to the consultation, outlining the following major aspects of this important item for business information providers:

• The need to consider trade credit and payment terms or payment delays practices as a core item of the corporate reporting
• The need to ensure compatibility between financial and sustainability reporting items and data management
• The support to electronic format reporting and to a common reporting to be included in the management report, even for small and micro companies
• The need of a fair level playing field, to also include corporate sustainability reporting for SMEs, be it with special adapted processes, to help foster a better access to credit for them.
• The need to amend the Accounting directive to promote transparency (cf the “confidentiality option” granted in some MS, where non-disclosure by the Business Register can be required) and compatibility with AML and other business transparency regulations

The next steps will be to monitor the legislative process when the CSRD is discussed by the European Parliament and the Council and stress the business information providers position, together with a close follow-up of the work done by the EFRAG on common CSRD standards. 

Source: FEBIS