Nothing stands in the way of the first set of ESRS standards being published on time. On Wednesday, October 18, 2023, the European Parliament rejected a motion by a group of MEPs to reject the regulation introducing the standards. Informal reports from the Council also indicate that it does not intend to block the standards. All that remains now is the publication of the set of 12 ESRSs in the Official Journal of the EU. This could happen almost immediately, but problems with the quality of translations into the individual languages of the member states mean that we should not expect publication until December 2023.
The situation will be different for sectoral standards. They were to be issued by the Commission by June 30, 2024, and become effective at the beginning of the following year. On Tuesday, October 17, 2023, the European Commission presented Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council regarding the postponement of the EC's issuance of sector-specific standards by two years, i.e., until June 30, 2026. We will therefore apply sector-specific standards starting with reports for 2027. EFRAG has thus been given more time to prepare draft sectoral standards, and companies will continue to report based solely on general standards for longer, meaning that their reports will continue to include numerous entity-specific disclosures. The Commission's issuance of a standard for non-EU companies will also be postponed by the same amount of time, i.e., two years.
During the meeting in Brussels on October 17-18, 2023, the Sustainability Reporting TEG discussed again the draft Implementation Guidance on materiality and value chain. These two documents were amended following the publication of the final standards by the Commission and comments received from the Sustainability Reporting Board. The Board will discuss them in the coming days and, if adopted, they will be submitted for public consultation in November. Following the consultation, both sets of guidance are expected to be published in January or February 2024.
In particular, the Materiality Assessment Implementation Guidance is of great interest to companies. Many companies preparing to report in accordance with ESRS standards want to conduct a materiality assessment as soon as possible, and this document brings together all the elements related to this issue that are scattered throughout the ESRS set, and explains its complexities in simpler language. If you are planning to start your assessment soon, I suggest waiting until the draft is published in November. And if you can wait a little longer, it is worth waiting until January or February 2024 to use the final version of the guidelines.
Experts' interest in how to conduct a significance test was clearly evident during the event organized on October 20. webinar of the Polish Association of Listed Companies. The presence of several hundred people and numerous questions clearly show how important this topic is. At MATERIALITY ACADEMY, we also noticed a lot of interest. our new course dedicated to how to conduct a materiality assessment in accordance with the CSRD directive and ESRS standards.
At the end of Friday's webinar, I had the opportunity to quote myself. Two and a half years ago, during a conference on the EU Taxonomy of environmentally sustainable activities (it was the first conference where we explained step by step how to assess compliance with the taxonomy and how to report it), I said that Taxonomy is not a flight to Mars. This time, I used the same statement in relation to materiality assessment. Yes, materiality assessment is a big challenge, both for companies that have never done it before and for those that have reported exclusions based on GRI standards. Yes, it will be complicated the first time around, and you will need to find your way among all these perspectives, parameters, and relationships. But Taxonomy was also difficult at first, and today it is almost commonplace for many companies. We can do it with materiality assessments too!
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