The European Commission has published the finalized revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) for companies covered by the EU’s mandatory Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and its voluntary reporting standard for smaller companies in the Official Journal of the EU.
The publication follows the adoption of the revised ESRS and voluntary reporting standard by the EU Commission in July, and the expiry of a subsequent scrutiny period by the European Parliament and Council.
The entry into force of the new regulation ends a more than 1 year process to simplify sustainability reporting requirements for companies, initiated in early 2025 by the EU Commission, under its Omnibus I initiative. According to the text published in the Journal, the new regulation is set to enter into force on November 10, 2026, and applying to financial years beginning from January 1, 2027.
The Omnibus package was approved by EU lawmakers earlier this year, dramatically reducing the number of companies covered by the EU’s mandatory sustainability disclosure regulation, the CSRD, by 90% by removing companies with less than €450 million in revenue and 1,000 employees, compared to the prior 250 employee threshold. For companies under the CSRD threshold, the initiative introduced a limit on sustainability-related information requests from larger companies to information included in a planned new voluntary reporting standard, to be based on the Voluntary Standard for SMEs (VSME) endorsed last year by the EU Commission.
For companies remaining within the scope of the CSRD, the Omnibus initiative sought to significantly simplify and scale back sustainability reporting requirements through the introduction of a revised ESRS. The Commission mandated the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), the preparer of the initial ESRS, with developing technical advice to revise the ESRS in line with the proposals simplification objectives.
EFRAG submitted its finalized revision of the ESRS in December 2025, which proposed a reduction in mandatory datapoints of 61%, and the elimination all voluntary disclosures, resulting in a total datapoint reduction of over 70%. The Commission subsequently released its draft ESRS and voluntary standards in May 2026, with minor modifications, and adopted the finalized texts in July.
Click here to access the finalized ESRS and voluntary standard in the Official Journal of the EU.
