ISSB Vice-Chair Sue Lloyd delivers keynote speech on the current agenda of the ISSB and cooperation with EU Institutions
Aug 30, 2023
On August 30, 2023, the Vice-Chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board, Sue Lloyd delivered the keynote address at Brussels, providing a high-level overview of what the inaugural Standards—IFRS S1 and IFRS S2—cover, how they have been received since they were issued in June and how they relate to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards.
She discussed the following five aspects:
- The need for global sustainability disclosures: The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) Standards are being developed to enhance investor-company dialogue through by consolidating and inheriting the resources of other investor-focused initiatives in order to reduce fragmentation.
- Overview of IFRS S1 and IFRS S2: Ms. Lloyd gave an overview of the first two ISSB standards, IFRS S1, the general requirements standard, that provides a set of overarching disclosure requirements designed to enable companies to communicate to investors about the sustainability-related risks and opportunities they face over the short, medium and long term, and IFRS S2 that sets out specific climate-related disclosures and is designed to be used with IFRS S1.
- Support for the ISSB standards: Ms. Lloyd noted the strong support from the investor community internationally for the consistency and comparability of information the ISSB standards will provide for, the announcement from the Financial Stability Board that as a result of the ISSB standards the work of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is complete, and endorsement of the standards by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).
- Cooperation with the European Union: The ISSB welcomes the commitment from the European Commission and European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) to support the need for international consistency. The ISSB's work with European Commission and EFRAG is now focused on how to jointly illustrate the interoperability between the standards.
- Next steps for the ISSB: The ISSB will analyze closely the views of the key stakeholders on the next two-year agenda for the ISSB. Stakeholders have been asked to comment on the strategic direction and balance of the ISSB’s activities; the criteria for assessing which sustainability-related matters to prioritize; and the scope and structure of potential new research and standard-setting projects.
Access the speech on the IFRS website.
