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As the global voice of the accountancy profession, IFAC has supported a global system for delivering consistent, comparable and assurable sustainability information. Such disclosure must become a core component of the corporate reporting ecosystem that helps stakeholders assess objectives and progress towards addressing the climate crisis and other important environmental, social, and governance matters. European Sustainability Reporting Standards can play an important part in aligning global and jurisdictional-specific goals.
IFAC supports the view that sustainability disclosure requirements should be developed to capture and measure what really matters and to facilitate adoption and implementation in an internationally compatible manner. Alignment between global and jurisdiction-specific requirements, to the extent possible, is key for companies who operate across national borders, who compete for capital globally, and who are working towards a more sustainable future.
IFAC CEO Kevin Dancey said “Collectively, we have an historic opportunity to embrace equivalency and interoperability in sustainability initiatives around the world, to leverage the work of existing high-quality sustainability frameworks, and to avoid costly regulatory fragmentation and complexity. Toward this end, IFAC strongly supports the ISSB’s recently announced working group that will establish dialogue for enhanced compatibility between the ISSB’s recent exposure drafts and ongoing jurisdictional initiatives like that of the European Union.”
The European Commission’s
ambitious Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive seeks to put
sustainability-related reporting on the same footing as traditional
financial reporting—addressing what sustainability information must be
reported and requiring its assurance, among other important elements
that can enhance corporate reporting. We hope this important work
ultimately contributes to—and amplifies the impact of—an emerging global
sustainability disclosure system.