While the EU Directive on Non-Financial Information (NFI) Disclosure only applies to larger companies, preliminary results from the EFAA survey suggest that NFI reporting is quite common for SMEs due to national requirements. Furthermore, there is also growing interest in the benefits of integrated thinking and reporting by SMEs.

EFAA suggests that the following policy considerations should be taken into account for further discussion:

• SMEs should be encouraged to consider voluntarily providing NFI as this may yield benefits to them, their stakeholders and the wider public;
• Some elements of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) might be suitable for voluntary adoption by SMEs; and
• National regulators should be encouraged to refer to the NFRD if formulating NFI requirements for their SMEs as this will help enhance international comparability of NFI reporting by SMEs.

Please click to access the full survey results on the EFAA website.