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The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) published Exposure Drafts of the simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) used to comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). While the Exposure Drafts are subject to change based on feedback from public consultation, they clarify the amendments proposed for the final simplification, which:

• Introduces new and revised content to clarify requirements, highlight principles-based concepts, better align with global reporting standards
• Removes content, such as redundancies and superfluous information
• Introduces datapoints, in a very limited number
• Removes datapoints, including all voluntary datapoints — which instead appear in Non-Mandatory Illustrative Guidance (NMIG) — and some mandatory datapoints

To provide your feedback during the public consultation, respond to EFRAG's Survey on the Exposure Drafts by September 29, 2025.

Take this time to prepare for the simplified ESRS:

• Based on the proposed simplification of double-materiality, refine your stakeholder list and strategize how to most efficiently gain their assessment of sustainability topics.
• With more flexibility in how your company can organize its information, consider how you manage sustainability data, and identify areas where you can improve.
• Identify redundancies in your sustainability report — particularly between General Disclosures and Topical Standards — and any granular narratives added for compliance, not utility.
• Research what other consultants and experts — like Ropes & Gray and EY — say about the simplification and its impacts on report preparers.

When finalized, the simplified ESRS will be available in Sustainability Explorer.

To learn more, view:

• FAQ: What You Need to Know about the ESRS Consultation
• The Sustainability Shift: Navigating a Fragmented Landscape
• Prepare for upcoming simplified ESRS for CSRD

What's new

To further simplify the complexities of the ESRS, you can use the ESRS Intelligence knowledge base, now available for Workiva AI. When you select this knowledge base, you can ask Workiva AI to help identify and clarify the Standards' disclosure requirements, such as with easy-to-understand summaries and insights. 

Note: The ESRS Intelligence knowledge base is available for any Sustainability Reporting Advanced workspace with Workiva AI enabled. To enable Workiva AI for your organization, an Org Admin must sign and approve the Workiva AI Terms of Use. Org Admins can also manage the enablement of Workiva AI as needed, such as to restrict it to only specific workspaces and members, or to disable it altogether.

For additional clarity, you can ask Workiva AI to refine or adjust its responses — such as to further simplify a summary — and review the Standards it references directly in Sustainability Explorer. To learn more, view Use Workiva AI with European Sustainability Reporting Standards.

What's next: As announced at Amplify, Workiva AI will be able to also help create draft disclosures for the ESRS and help provide insights and draft disclosures for the International Financial Reporting Standards Sustainability Disclosure Standards (IFRS SDS) from International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

Want to stay current? Follow What's new in Sustainability Reporting!

On the calendar

October 8, join Tackling Financed Emissions with the PCAF Standard for a conversation with Workiva and the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) about financed emissions, which are associated with lending and investment activities and typically account for over 99% of financial institutions' total greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories.

At this webinar, you'll learn:

• The current landscape of disclosures and industry benchmarks
• Emerging topics and trends in financed emissions reporting
• How Workiva can help build reliable, robust inventories for financed emissions

Register now! 

Share your thoughts

The Workiva Community provides ample opportunity to engage with and learn from subject-matter experts, advisory partners, and other sustainability reporters. Join the conversation in these discussion threads:

• Community Connect: Sustainability, to learn from industry professionals and peers as you collaborate and share insights, challenges, and solutions.
• Sustainability Management, to discuss best practices and experiences with sustainability reporting, in general and within the Workiva Platform
• What's new in Sustainability, to learn the latest enhancements of Sustainability Reporting features like Sustainability Program and Sustainability Explorer
• Sustainability Feedback, to share and support ideas on how to improve Sustainability Management features

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