There finance He is called to be allied of sustainability, to rewrite his priorities by directing resources towards regenerative growth models, with a positive and sustainable impact, to start a silent but profound transformation that invests accounting and financial knowledge. In this scenario the recent is inserted Corporate Sustainability Reporting DirectiveThat obliges thousands of European companies to report in a timely and normally their environmental and social impacts.
With the introduction of the directive “The financial statements – he explained Candida Bussoli Director of the Management Department, Finance and Technology ofLum Universityon the occasion of the first edition of the Lum Conference on Accounting and Finance – they must narrate the truth of the world, and not only the trajectories of profit. Italy With its entrepreneurial structure made of medium and small companies, it is faced with one duplicate challenge: learn a new language and understand its political scope. In this context, universities and research centers have the task of orienting, instructing, anticipating “.
The EU law imposein fact, to companies larger than a certain threshold to disseminate risk information and on opportunities deriving from social and environmental issues and on the impact of their activities on people and the environment. This helps investors, civil society organizations, consumers and other interest bearers to evaluate the services of companies in terms of sustainability, within the European Green Deal.
CSRD: What changes with the Omnibus package
On February 26, 2025 the European Commission adopted a Package of proposals to simplify the EU standards e Promote competitiveness. The package proposes to apply the CSRD only to larger companies (those with more than a thousand employees), concentrating the sustainability reporting obligations on companies that are more likely to have the greater impact on people and the environment. Furthermore, it aims to ensure that the obligations of communication against large enterprises I don’t understand the smallest companies in their chains of value. Among the main proposals on the CSRD include: the postponement of the reporting obligations for large companies and listed SMEs; raising the size of 250 to more than a thousand employees; and the simplification and reduction of reporting standards (ESS).
The new deadlines for businesses
They were the reporting obligations of two years of sustainability provided for by the CRSD Directive that establishes the rules for the communication of sustainability information according to the New European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESS). In detail It goes from 2025 to 2027 for large companies who are not EIP (who have more than 500 employees as well as large companies with a maximum of 500 employees); companies that are not EIP and which are controlling of large groups with more than 500 employees; and the companies that are controlling of large groups up to 500 employees. From 2026 to 2028 for listed SMEs, small credit institutions and not complex e Captive insurance and reinsurance companies. This was established by the Directive (EU) 2025/794, published on April 16, 2025 which modifies the directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760, which must be implemented by the Member States by 31 December 2025. These extensions are motivated by the desire to prevent companies that are not yet kept on the obligation to begin to adopt measures that would prove to be premature or useless, consequent economic and organizational expenditure.
The risks for entrepreneurs who do not adapt
“The risk Main – explains the accountant Renato Zanichelli In an analysis for ESG 360 – it is that of go out of the market. Companies will no longer be evaluated, in fact, based only on their economic-financial performance but also to those of sustainability. AND among the evaluators there are i clients and the same credit systemtwo fundamental Stakholders who are already favoring, in their relationships, the most virtuous companies. The rooting of Environmental, social and governance factors within economic-company thought is a concrete reality. Business models – concludes Zanichelli – influence and are influenced by strategic choices that are increasingly oriented towards sustainability, and by the accounts rules, called to report their realization “.
