Support for standardised sustainability reporting

Firstly, ESMA has published a final report on the Guidelines on Enforcement of Sustainability Information (GLESI). The guidelines contained therein set out the framework for enforcement by the competent national authorities. The report and the guidelines are based on the draft submitted for consultation in December 2023 and have now been finalised based on the feedback from the consultation. The guidelines will soon be made available on ESMA's website in all official EU languages.

Secondly, ESMA has published a public statement on the first-time application of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). In this statement, ESMA refers to the guidance already published by the EU Commission and EFRAG. It also emphasises key areas that ESMA considers to be of particular importance:

• Establishing governance arrangements and internal controls that can promote high quality sustainability reporting;
• proper design and implementation of the double materiality analysis and transparency in relation to this analysis;
• Transparency about the use of transition reliefs;
• the preparation of a clearly structured and digitisation-ready sustainability statement; and
• Creating connectivity between financial and sustainability information.

Both documents are linked in the ESMA press release.