If you want to stay up to date and be the first to see the new standards, then register for the online conference organized by EFRAG. On December 4, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., you can hear about the most important changes in standards directly from the people who participated in the work. Ahead of this event, below are some of my own conclusions about what we can expect.
The new ESRSs will be shorter, easier to understand, more clearly written, and more elegantly structured. These are clear advantages and are the result of the tremendous work done by the EFRAG secretariat and the members of both bodies (Sustainability Reporting TEG and Board) under considerable time pressure. With more time, the result could have been even better.
The weakest element of the standards are the numerous and partially overlapping exemptions and simplifications. Many of them are not limited in time. I fully understand that certain disclosure requirements can be complicated and that companies need time to learn how to comply with them; I myself have proposed the introduction of several such solutions. However, the use of exemptions that can always be applied in the future defeats the very idea of standards, which are intended to lead to the disclosure of specific information. I am concerned that these facilitations may be abused by a few companies that would like to hide some unfavorable information. This, in turn, will harm the competitive position of the vast majority of companies that want to report accurately.
In turn, the strongest element of the new ESRS is a very clear indication that they are a system based on the principle of fair presentation. I expect that in the future I will devote several editions of the newsletter to explaining what this principle entails and how it affects the process of working on the report. Today, however, it is worth pointing out that, above all, it means that you have to think when creating a report. Our task is to present a fair and clear picture of the company, what it influences, what risks and opportunities it has, and how it manages sustainability issues.
When creating a report, you have to think, because standards are not a compliance system where you just need to fulfill a few dozen or a few hundred detailed requirements to have peace of mind. We should select the requirements contained in the standards appropriately to disclose what is relevant to our company. And if we lack guidance in the standards, we resort to company-specific disclosures. Their role will be much greater in the era of simplified ESRSs. We may also encounter a situation where a disclosure requirement contained in the standards does not perfectly fit the presentation of our company's situation and needs to be replaced with another disclosure. At the same time, the picture of the company should be clear, allowing us to regain control over the volume and detail of the report. I cannot imagine that sustainability reports, even for the most complex capital groups, would exceed a few dozen pages.
The new ESRS will be suitable for reporting not only by the largest companies, for which reporting will remain mandatory, but also by all large enterprises that will prepare reports voluntarily. Anyway, take a look at the standards yourself (on Thursday), I am very curious to hear your opinions about them.
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