Simplifying the CSRD without compromising its ambition

While the future of the EU's Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Directive (CSRD), like that of other Green Deal legislation, remains uncertain, Impact France is fully mobilized and calls for a balanced simplification of this key text aimed at making it a powerful lever for competitiveness and sustainability for European companies.

#FuturCSRD, a collective dynamic to make the voice of concerned business leaders heard

The Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Directive (CSRD), adopted in 2022 and recently phased in, establishes an ambitious, harmonized framework to guide our economies and businesses on the road to transition. By providing companies with a solid basis for integrating environmental and social risks while transforming their business models, it represents a strategic lever for strengthening the competitiveness of the European Union, which is resolutely committed to building a sustainable economic model.

However, its implementation reveals operational complexities (revealed in particular in our #FuturCSRD questionnaire) which, without adjustments, risk compromising its effectiveness for companies, particularly certain SMEs and ETIs. In this respect, the European Commission's current initiatives around the omnibus law, scheduled for publication on December 26, may represent an opportunity to optimize the application of the CSRD and make it a powerful lever for competitiveness and sustainability for European companies, if they do not go back on its initial ambition.

In the face of growing pressure from some in the business world to call the directive into question, we have brought together 12 French business and financial networks in the #FuturCSRD coalition to reiterate that this adjustment phase must under no circumstances become a pretext for weakening its objectives.

In a collective press kit, we have also decided to highlight the testimonies of 15 company managers concerned by CSRD, including Catherine Touvrey (Harmonie Mutuelle), Adrien Geiger (L'OCCITANE en Provence), Jérôme Sauer (KS Groupe), Christophe Barnouin (Ecotone), Alexandra Mathiolon (Serfim), François Guérin (CETIH), Sophie Robert-Velut (Laboratoires Expansciences), Claire Chiollaz (MTB) and many others, illustrating the obstacles encountered and possible solutions to support companies in their transformation, and underlining how imperative it is to maintain a clear and ambitious direction while adjusting the legislative framework to the realities on the ground.

‍Presskit

Impact France's concrete recommendations for simplifying and improving CSRD

At a time when European negotiations on the revision of the CSRD are in full swing, Impact France has been mobilized since day one and supports a pragmatic and operational approach based on the following areas of development:

A pragmatic simplification that promotes the valuation and comparability of companies' ESG performance, giving priority to quantitative and semi-narrative indicators.
Preservation of the CSRD's extra-territoriality principle, to guarantee fair transparency rules and maintain the competitiveness of European companies.
Adopting a more progressive and proportionate approach.
The introduction of the "one-stop ESG" substitution principle, so that the sustainability report replaces specific national declarations that companies may consider redundant,
The adoption of sectoral guidelines pending the finalization of sectoral ESRSs to support companies in specific industrial sectors.
Clarify the scope of audits for companies.

Julia Faure & Pascal Demurger, co-Presidents of the Impact France movement: "Impact France supports a pragmatic simplification of the CSRD, which preserves its fundamental ambitions while allowing for necessary adjustments to better respond to companies' operational realities. This directive is a key lever of competitiveness and protection for the European economy, and of resilience for our companies. It is essential that every company, whatever its size, be able to take full advantage of it. We call for a balanced approach, which takes into account the practical adjustments required while preserving sustainability objectives."