Two-year deferral for sustainability reporting obligation

28.02.2025

Source: E & M powernews

The Association for the Conservative Use of Energy and Water (Asew) sees this week's EU omnibus procedure as a postponement of the deadline for the CSRD sustainability reporting obligation.

The implementation of the sustainability reporting obligation into national law has already exceeded the deadlines in Germany. CSRD stands for the Corporate Social Responsibility Directive (EU) 2022/2464 of companies. With the establishment of the so-called "omnibus" procedure on February 26, 2025, companies have now been granted a delay. The Association for the Efficient Use of Energy and Water (Asew) points this out.

The new procedure also reduces the number of companies affected. Nevertheless, the network advises not to turn away from the topic of sustainability. "Implementation should be postponed for two years," explains Goldy Raimann, Group Leader for Sustainability at Asew, a key result of the published omnibus packages. The EU has made significant adjustments to the CSRD in the Omnibus I & II package.

Reporting obligation no longer applies to 80 percent of companies

One reason for this is presumably that it has only been transposed into national law by 20 of the 27 EU member states. Seven EU member states, including Germany, have not yet done so. The EU is now introducing a "Stop the Clock" deferral. "Without this adjustment, a whole series of companies in the EU member states with applicable national CSRD laws that have not yet prepared a sustainability report would have remained subject to reporting requirements, only to fall out of the group of companies subject to reporting requirements again in two years' time," explains Raimann.

This has to do with a further adjustment: Namely, the Commission defines a new company size for the reporting obligation. "These are companies with more than 1,000 employees and an annual net turnover of 50 million euros," says Laura Briese, Sustainability Project Manager at Asew. "This means that around 80 percent of the companies previously covered by the reporting obligation will no longer be required to do so."

Sustainability remains a competitive factor

However, even if a significant proportion of the companies previously affected are no longer subject to the reporting obligation, they should still pay attention to sustainability, advises Asew. "Competitive reasons or simply working with particularly large companies are good reasons to still prepare a sustainability report," Raimann points out. "Many companies that are not actually required to report still have to disclose data to larger companies," she reminds us.

Changes to the ESRS

Further adjustments have been made to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which are intended to make reports more comparable. The scope of data points is to be significantly reduced and more data points are to be defined as voluntary. The sector-specific standards that have been under discussion for some time will also no longer be introduced and will therefore be completely eliminated. In addition, auditors will in future only be required to provide limited assurance when auditing sustainability reports instead of sufficient assurance.

The published omnibus packages also address the EU taxonomy. "For companies that fall within the future scope of the CSRD and have a net turnover of up to 450 million euros, the omnibus proposal provides for voluntary taxonomy reporting," explains Nina Hinrichs, Sustainability Project Manager at Asew. This would drastically reduce the number of companies subject to taxonomy reporting.

Consequences for municipal utilities

The network advises municipal utilities to check the scope of consolidation in their own company with the parent company and other subsidiaries. Raimann explains: "The company sizes also include groups of companies." If this check then reveals that you fall outside of the target group, you should check which trading partners you work with. "This could still result in a need to provide sustainability-related data points," warns the Asew expert.

Author: Susanne Harmsen