Editorial ESG News 4/2024

 

Dear readers, 

With the collapse of the coalition, the current federal government is severely restricted in its ability to act. This means that some of the legislative projects planned for this year will probably no longer be implemented. This could also include the CSRD Implementation Act, which was scheduled to be passed by the German Bundestag in the last plenary session on December 20, 2024. If the law is not passed on this date, the current legal status will continue to apply unchanged with regard to sustainability reporting. According to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NRFD) and the German CSR Directive Implementation Act (CSR-RUG), large capital market-oriented companies with more than 500 employees are obliged to submit a “non-financial statement” in accordance with Section 289b of the German Commercial Code (HGB). We have summarized everything you need to know about the current status and our assessment of further developments in the article “CSRD implementation in Germany: current status and outlook”. We will of course keep you up to date on further developments.

 

Regardless of whether the CSRD Implementation Act is passed, it can be assumed that the main contents of this EU directive will remain valid. In this last issue of our newsletter for 2024, we are therefore revisiting the most important topics based on the wealth of experience gained over the past year. These include lessons learned from the materiality analysis​, the S1 social standard​, sustainability ratings and their interaction with the ESRS, first-time reporting in accordance with the EU taxonomy with a focus on the capability analysis, the connection between GRC and ESG and contractual cooperation in the supply chain​. We also assess the potential of science-based targets​ in the context of CSRD, take a look at the situation in Italy and shed light on a new law for energy-intensive companies.

 

We would like to know what other sustainability-related topics are on your mind? Please use our  » survey for this purpose. 

We hope that with this last 2024 issue we have once again succeeded in producing a newsletter that is rich in content and easy to understand. As always, we are happy to hear your suggestions in person.  

Stay with us and have a good start to the new year

Your

Martin Wambach

P.S. In the next issues, we will focus on data collection, i.e. how the data points for the individual standards E, S and G are actually collected and validated.