The European Commission has presented the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The new regulations will replace the previous Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and will affect – and significantly expand – virtually all relevant aspects of corporate reporting: users, reporting content and the assurance requirement.
The European Commission had first codified the requirements for certain companies to issue a “non-financial declaration” on key sustainability aspects in Directive 2014/95/EU in November 2014. The Directive was adopted into German law in April 2017 by the German CSR Directive Implementation Act. As a result, non-financial information has had to be reported in the annual report or a separate annex since 2018. This includes information on environmental protection, social responsibility, employee relations, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and bribery as well as diversity in company’s management boards. NFRD requirements apply to public-interest companies (those listed on a capital market) with more than 500 employees as well as insurance companies and banks.
