"The time is ripe for EU policy reforms and standards on corporate sustainability reporting", 26 May 2020

[T]he EU Commission initiated the reform of the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD)... The severity of COVID-19 and its economic and social consequences have underlined the need to further and strengthen our efforts...

The undersigned civil society organisations welcome this ambition, and call on the European Commission to address the following two critical issues:

1. Clarify and improve the basic elements of the NFRD...

The reformed legislation must specify at minimum the following:

❯ The double-materiality principle...

❯ The materiality determination process...

❯ The interconnectivity of the reporting requirements...

❯ Transparency requirements concerning governance of sustainability matters...

2. Develop EU standards to ensure the relevance and comparability of sustainability disclosures...

[S]ector-specific standards are indispensable to ensure that comparable and decision-useful information is disclosed by companies. The European Commission must initiate this process as soon as possible to ensure the NFR reform and standards are ready simultaneously...

[T]he Commission should urgently set parameters for the quality and content of the standards from the perspective of their ability to support the sustainability goals of the EU^[1].