2024 will be the year of sustainability for the European Union and so much so that one of its most ambitious proposals will come into force: the CSRD directive. With it, more than 50,000 companies will have to report to the EU about their impact on climate change in a transparent way for institutions and investors.

According to Mayrata Conesa, Manager of Compliance and Good Governance at AENOR, this measure “consolidates the reporting of non-financial information for companies”, so “it represents progress on the path already taken with the directive and previous legislation in reporting matter.”

In this sense, he considers that “it is an advance from the moment that it no longer speaks of non-financial information but of information on sustainability in a broad sense, including social, environmental and governance issues.”

Conesa recalls the importance of this data: “In this way, there is no longer any doubt that information on sustainability is considered key for interest groups and that they will make their investment decisions, for example, taking this into account. type of information as much or more than they take into consideration financial information,” he explains.

Furthermore, Conesa states that “the directive involves the effective implementation of the concept of double materiality, which is the union of the materiality of the impact and the financial materiality”, which means “that the sustainability issues that the organization identifies have been to submit to that double analysis to determine if they are relevant.”

Many managers are still not clear to what extent the CSRD directive will affect their activity: “The fact of having to identify, with this double materiality process, what issues are relevant to the organization in terms of sustainability has a clear impact on the activity.” of the company, since it implies the acquisition of commitments both to maintain the impact and to improve the results obtained,” recalls Conesa.

This means that “in some way, the reporting exercise forces companies to try to improve in order to show these improvements in successive reports, knowing that this information will be considered by their interest groups for decision making.” Explain.

Although large companies are the first to get their act together, this will also affect SMEs: “Sustainability is already key for organizations, regardless of their size. Although small companies will be the last to join these reporting obligations, advancing on these issues will make it easier for them to work with large clients who are impacted by the obligation and will extend these issues to their value chain.” , highlights Conesa.

Sustainability and renewable energies are one of the subjects with the most projection and future today. Companies affected by the CSRD directive are already looking for professionals with training in this sector to help them adapt to the new regulations.

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