The European Commission issued a delegated regulation introducing ESRS standards on July 31, 2023. A few days later, versions of the regulation and standards were also published in all languages used in individual EU member states. The Polish translation contained many errors—not only linguistic awkwardness, but also substantive errors, where incorrectly chosen words made a specific provision in the standards incomprehensible or even different in essence from the original English.
A group of experts dealing with sustainability reporting, under the auspices of the Polish Association of Listed Companies, prepared comments and proposals for changes to the Polish version of the standards. The material was forwarded to the Ministry of Finance and then to the European Commission. Over the past year, at several Sustainability Reporting TEG meetings at EFRAG, I have repeatedly called on the European Commission to prepare a reliable translation of the standards. This request was probably most vocal during the conference on the implementation of ESRS organized by the EC in May 2024.
Finally, after more than a year, the European Commission has issued a correction to Delegated Regulation 2023/2772 with regard to the Polish version of the ESRS standards. It is available in the Official Journal of the EU. at this address. Finally, I can recommend using the Polish version of ESRS with a clear conscience 😊
This is the second correction to the standards. The first was issued by the EC on April 19, 2024, but it concerned basic technical errors, such as references to incorrect paragraphs and sections, or the standardization of certain terms used in the standards. The linguistic quality was still unsatisfactory.
What has been changed with the latest correction? A large number of terms and names that were particularly jarring and incomprehensible have been corrected. Resource inflows and outflows are finally referred to as resources introduced and withdrawn (rather than the unfortunate „inflows” and „outflows” of resources). „Own employees” have disappeared, replaced by „own employee resources.” And above all, we no longer have „rządzenia” (governance), but „ład korporacyjny” (corporate governance), which is the correct translation of the English term. These are, of course, not the only changes; there are many of them in the Polish version of the standards, and they definitely improve the quality of the document.
Unfortunately, not all errors have been eliminated. The physical and transitional risks related to climate change referred to in paragraph 20 of ESRS E1 are still referred to as „severe,” although they should be „gross” risks, as I wrote about last week. However, the scale of changes in all standards allows for their relatively safe application.
At the time of writing, the EUR-LEX system does not yet have a consolidated version of the standards that would take into account the latest correction. At this address The old version of the Polish ESRS, the one with serious errors, can still be found. So for now, I suggest using the link I provided in one of the previous paragraphs. However, we should soon receive a consolidated version of the standards in the eur-lex system, taking into account the latest amendments.
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