In response to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) Omnibus, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) published the draft simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). From your Sustainability Reporting workspace, you can use the simplified ESRS to begin to prepare CSRD disclosures.
Note: The simplified ESRS are currently a draft version, subject to change based on feedback and public consultation.
What changed
The draft simplified ESRS include a number of amendments from the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023:
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New and revised content, to:
- Clarify requirements and address implementation challenges
- Better align with global reporting standards like the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Sustainability Disclosure Standards (SDS)
- Highlight specific principles-based concepts like Fair Representation
- Remove superfluous or redundant information
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Revised datapoints, including:
- The removal of all voluntary datapoints, which instead appear in the Non-Mandatory Illustrative Guidance (NMIG)
- A limited number of new datapoints
- A reduction in the total number of mandatory datapoints
Note: For a comprehensive list of the changes, refer to EFRAG's Log of Amendments. For details of why they changed, refer to EFRAG's Basis for Conclusions.
Explore simplified ESRS
From Sustainability Explorer, you can browse and review the simplified ESRS.
Note: In the Frameworks panel, the simplified ESRS appears as a Draft version; the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023 appears as the Current version.
As you review the simplified Standards, you can:
- Bookmark Standards and disclosure requirements relevant to your sustainability reporting.
- Discuss requirements with collaborators through comment threads.
- Align disclosure requirements with metrics in Sustainability Program that collect related values.
To learn more, view Explore European Sustainability Reporting Standards.
Transition Program metrics
If you have Program metrics aligned with the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023, you can use the ESRS Transition Accelerator — available in the Workiva Marketplace — to determine the impact and make any adjustments.
With the ESRS Transition Accelerator, you can:
- Compare the ESRS Delegated Act and simplified ESRS, and view what changed between them.
- Determine how the simplified ESRS may impact your metrics and data collection needs.
- Automatically generate Import templates to create, update, and remove metrics as necessary in Sustainability Program.
To learn more, view Prepare for draft simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards with ESRS Transition Accelerator.
Update CSRD DMA assessments
If your Sustainability Reporting workspace includes the CSRD add-on, you can request a Simplified ESRS DMA Topics and DRs Spreadsheet from your Workiva Customer Success Manager (CSM) to prepare your double-materiality assessment (DMA) templates for the simplified ESRS.
Note: To update your DMA templates, you can either import new topics or align your current topics with the simplified ESRS. Consult your advisory partner to determine which is right for your reporting needs.
To learn more, view Update DMA templates for simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards.