Revised ESRS and EU Voluntary Standard are now final

The European sustainability reporting landscape has reached an important milestone. On 21 September 2026, the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the new EU Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard were published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The publication provides companies with greater clarity on the future sustainability reporting framework following the changes introduced through the Omnibus I package.

 

Revised ESRS: a more streamlined reporting framework

The revised ESRS simplify the existing sustainability reporting requirements while maintaining the core principles of the framework, including double materiality.

The changes are intended to reduce the reporting burden and provide companies with greater flexibility while ensuring that sustainability statements continue to provide meaningful information on material impacts, risks and opportunities.

The revised ESRS will enter into force on 10 November 2026 and apply to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027.

For companies preparing sustainability reports under the CSRD, the publication means that attention can now shift from the development of the standards towards their practical implementation.

A new EU Voluntary Standard for smaller companies

Alongside the revised ESRS, the EU has introduced a Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for companies outside the scope of mandatory sustainability reporting.

The standard builds on EFRAG’s work on the Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME) and provides a proportionate framework for companies that want or need to communicate sustainability information without being subject to mandatory CSRD reporting.

It is particularly relevant for companies responding to sustainability information requests from customers, banks, investors and other business partners. The standard is designed to help these companies provide comparable and relevant information while avoiding unnecessarily complex reporting requirements.

The Voluntary Standard is intended for undertakings outside mandatory sustainability reporting requirements that do not exceed an average of 1,000 employees during the preceding financial year.

The value chain cap: limiting information requests

An important element of the new framework is the value chain cap.

Companies subject to mandatory sustainability reporting often require information from suppliers and other companies throughout their value chains. For smaller companies, these requests can create a considerable administrative burden.

The Voluntary Standard establishes a reference point for the sustainability information that reporting companies may request from undertakings protected by the value chain cap. This is intended to create a more proportionate approach to sustainability data collection across value chains.

The EU Voluntary Standard entered into force on 24 September 2026, while the value chain cap applies for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027.

What happens next?

With the revised ESRS and the EU Voluntary Standard now published, the focus moves from developing the regulatory framework to putting it into practice.

Companies should now assess:

• which sustainability reporting requirements apply to their organisation
• how the revised ESRS affect existing reporting processes and data collection
• whether the EU Voluntary Standard provides an appropriate framework for voluntary reporting
• how sustainability information is requested and exchanged across their value chains

For many organisations, this will also be an opportunity to review existing reporting processes and ensure that resources are focused on information that is both material and useful for decision making.

Greater regulatory clarity does not remove the work involved in sustainability reporting, but it provides a more stable basis for companies to develop practical, proportionate and meaningful reporting processes for the years ahead.