European Lab publishes report on the progress of its task force on possible EU non-financial reporting standards

  • EFRAG (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group) (dk green) Image

16 Nov 2020

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) has published a report of the progress of its project task force on preparatory work for the elaboration of possible EU non-financial reporting standards.

For the first phase of the project, the task force was split into several work streams to assess the current situation and report on it to the European Commission. The streams included focuses on special groups (e.g. financial institutions, SMEs) EU focuses (e.g. current reporting practices and momentum of reporting in the EU) and an international focus (which initiatives exist and can their work be leveraged).

While the EU-focused assessment includes "all current, developing and expected European initiatives", the international assessment, despite the 31 October cut-off date, makes no reference to newer initiatives such as the Trustees' consultation on establishing a global sustainability standard-setter, the WEF publication on an ESG framework and common metrics for reporting or the statement of intent of CDP, CDSB, GRI, IIRC, and SASB to work together towards a comprehensive corporate reporting system. A vague reference to these developments might be read into the statement that "Convergence and harmonisation efforts among some initiatives are taking place. These efforts include Memorandums of Understanding, Statements of Intent, Consultation processes and, from a technical standpoint, tables of translation from one initiative to another." However, the report dismisses these efforts in the very same paragraph and states: "Despite such efforts, the number of initiatives has continued to grow over the past years."

Please click to access the full progress report on the EFRAG website.

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.