Written by Richard Howitt, Strategic advisor on corporate sustainability, formerly MEP and CEO of the IIRC, as part of Frank Bold's series of monthly articles on sustainability reporting. Originally published at Reuters Sustainable Business. 

The fragmented patchwork of different ways for companies to report and be held to account on their social and environmental performance is soon to be replaced by widely accepted and endorsed international standards for corporate sustainability.

The European Union announced its decision to develop such standards in January 2020, followed by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation proposing the development of global standards in October, later in the same year...

The article presents key differences between the European and global corporate sustainability standards, tackling key questions such as:

• How will these two initiatives inter-relate?
• Will this represent a new fragmentation or can they be complementary?
• Will and should they converge into one?

In the last part of the article, Richard Howitt suggests ten practical ideas which separately or collectively might assist in securing greater consistency and collaboration between the European and global standard-setting initiatives.