The EU’s sustainability-reporting framework has been substantially updated. Under the mandate from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), EFRAG has published a draft simplified ESRS — the revised version reduces complexity and lowers compliance burden for companies.

Key aspects of the revised standards:

• Data-reporting requirements are significantly reduced: mandatory data points have been cut by roughly 57%, and when voluntary disclosures are excluded, total data points come down by about 68%.
• The standards are much shorter: the overall length of the documentation has been trimmed by over 55%, aiming to make reporting more streamlined and decision-useful.
• Simplified structure: reporting overlaps and redundancies have been removed; disclosure requirements are more clearly focused on “material” issues — that is, only information that meaningfully impacts a company’s financial performance or its environmental/social footprint needs to be disclosed.
• The simplified ESRS retain the core objective of the EU Green Deal: though lighter, the framework still aims to ensure transparency and accountability in ESG reporting across the EU.

EFRAG has submitted the draft simplified ESRS to the European Commission as technical advice. The simplification is part of a broader push within the EU to make ESG reporting more proportionate and manageable — especially for companies that find the earlier version overly burdensome.