22 November 2017

Accountancy Europe: Member State implementation of EU non-financial information directive

A CSR Europe and GRI published in collaboration with Accountancy Europe a comprehensive overview of how Member States are implementing the EU Directive on Non-financial and Diversity Information.

The Directive 2014/95/EU represents a minimum standard for non-financial reporting across the EU and, as such, allows considerable flexibility for Member States to adapt the provisions to suit their local regulatory environments. For example, Member States have full flexibility to increase the scope of the provisions so as to bring more companies under their umbrella but relatively few have chosen to do so. Instead, they rely on their existing definitions of public interest entities established under the transposition of the 2013 Accounting Directive. Nonetheless, Greece and Denmark are notable exceptions.

Practically all Member States have chosen to follow the high level of flexibility contained in the Directive that effectively allows the companies affected to choose their own reporting framework from the existing range of frameworks available.

Member states have also remained flexible regarding where the non-financial information report should be published. Approximately one third of countries have stuck with the Directive’s default position that the report should be contained in the Management report – a position that Accountancy Europe has supported.

Regarding assurance, the majority of Member States have chosen the minimum standard contained in the Directive: the auditor should check that the required statement is present. Upon the publication of the report, they have not identified any Member State that has chosen to require a higher level of assurance.

Full press release

Full report

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