Reliable sustainability reporting will enhance Europe's business environment and improve our daily lives

The Renew Europe Group in the European Parliament welcomes the adoption in the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) today of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting file, negotiated by our rapporteur, Pascal DURAND. We believe that companies that offer rigorous and systematic information on their impact on the environment, social standards, human rights protection and good governance help create a better business environment.

The new reporting rules that we support, will help first and foremost consumers to know what they buy. Companies will have predictability. Investors will be oriented towards more sustainable projects and transparency will increase on companies’ environmental impact, human rights respect across the supply chain, and governance ethics.

MEP Pascal DURAND (Liste Renaissance, France) Renew Europe rapporteur says:

"We want to develop our own European standards and rules so that those of others are not imposed on us, those of the United States tomorrow, or even China the day after tomorrow, or wait for the OECD to reach an agreement. Those rules will establish the so-called sustainability performance of business, to form, together with the financial performance, a more comprehensive approach to their performance".

Furthermore, the reporting will be verified and auditing rules will be strengthened.

"Nevertheless, financial and sustainability performances can be contradictory. That would put statutory auditors and audit firms that would simultaneously perform the financial statement audit and the sustainability information assurance engagements in a delicate situation, which would most certainly harm the data assurance engagement. This is why we are in favour of having more than one statutory auditor or audit firm to be simultaneously engaged to carry out the statutory audit and the assurance of sustainability reporting”, adds Mr DURAND