Hilde Blomme (Deputy CEO Accountancy Europe):
“If a company wants to do the non-financial reporting in a complete way, it also has to work with its suppliers and receive information from them in order for its reporting to be reliable. So many large entities will have a lot of smaller suppliers which might not directly fall under the directive but indirectly they would be asked to deliver that information as well. So, there is a consideration of proportionality that is needed: “can we require those smaller suppliers to deliver the same quality and quantity of information as a large one?” That is a very tricky issue. Maybe most people would say: “That goes too far.” So, there will be a need to find a more simplified reporting by smaller entities and also for the level of assurance there would be similar considerations. If it is only on the level of the large entity, what about the information that is reported up by smaller suppliers? So, there are a number of considerations that will need to be considered and to be straightened up. For instance, in the mandate that the Lab got, there is a requirement to look at potentially voluntary more simplified reporting standards for SMEs».