SMEunited publishes first assessment of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
Key messages
• CSRD will neither benefit SMEs nor their direct stakeholders
• Uncertainty on ‘SME standard’: Listed SME one or real SME (micro) standard?
• In absence of timely ‘SME-standard’ market will impose big industry one
• SMEs will have in practice no transposition period (contrary to Listed SMEs – 3
years)
• No guarantee that ‘SME standard’ will be accepted by non-SME clients
• Risk of gold-plating by Member States
• No ‘one in/one’ out compensation
• Estimated costs for SMEs: between 10 and 200 billion euro.
• Lack of budget for SME support.
“Moreover, the objective of the SME standard does not seem to report on their own performance but rather to fulfil the information needs of the large companies. Therefore, CSRD will neither benefit SMEs nor their own direct stakeholders, which have other interests,” — writes Luc Hendrickx in his article.
You can download First Assessment of the Proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Reporting here.