EIOPA issues its opinion on draft standards governing corporate sustainability disclosures

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, EIOPA, has published an opinion on the first set of draft European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS Set 1) developed by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) in response to the request of the European Commission (EC) and in accordance with the mandate set out in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
According to EIOPA, ESRS Set 1 generally achieves the objectives of promoting disclosure of high-quality material sustainability information, ensuring interoperability with other EU legislation and global standards, and being applicable by companies in a consistent and proportionate manner, with only some aspects to be enhanced.
In order for financial market participants to calculate the main adverse effect indicators (PAI) under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), EIOPA appreciates the materiality assessment and the mandatory disclosure requirements.
EIOPA requests additional clarification regarding the insurers‘ and pension funds‘ value chain boundaries so that relevant material sustainability impacts may be reported in a proportionate and risk-based way.
Along with a discussion about consistent and coherent implementation, fostering comparability with specific SFDR-related metrics may be necessary. Amendments of the SFDR Delegated Regulation need to reflect in ESRS.
In order for ESRS reporting to be in compliance with IFRS sustainability reporting, ESRS standards and IFRS standards should be comparable and the requirements for sustainability reporting may not be dispersed among jurisdictions.
For further details, please refer to the original document.
The EC will take into account EIOPA’s technical advice as well as advice from EBA (eventid=19481), ESMA (eventid=19442) and other public bodies.