EU: EFRAG delivers progress report to the Commission on simplification of ESRS

On 20 June 2025, EFRAG published its Progress Report to the European Commission on the simplification of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). The Report was unanimously approved by the EFRAG Sustainability Reporting Board (SRB) on 19 June 2025. During the meeting, EFRAG announced that the first draft of the amended ESRS will be shared by the end of June and will be discussed at the SRB meeting scheduled for 2 July 2025. The final draft of the revised ESRS is expected to be opened for public consultation at the end of July.

The public consultation is expected to last 40 to 45 days (until early September). However, EFRAG is consulting with the Commission regarding a possible extension of this deadline. The extension would depend on whether the current final deadline for preparing the revised ESRS, which is set for 31 October 2025, is adjusted by the Commission.

Key areas for simplification of the ESRS include double materiality assessment, better readability, the relationship between minimum disclosure requirements and topical specifications, improved understandability, clarity and accessibility of the standards, including clarification between mandatory and voluntary data points, introduction of the relief measures, value chain boundaries, and interoperability with international standards.

EFRAG is also reviewing all narrative data points with aim to put the emphasis on principles rather than on a checklist of information and identification of the least relevant qualitative and quantitative data points. EFRAG estimates that a 50+ per cent reduction in the number of data points can be achieved.