Developing European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) is a crucial step to help make the EU climate-neutral by 2050. We congratulate the Sustainability Reporting Board (SRB) for delivering the first set of draft ESRS as part of their Technical Advice to the European Commission (EC). The SRB, established under the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), has delivered the draft ESRS as required by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, despite all the time and resources constraints.  

We praise all SRB members for their commitment and diligence, under the capable leadership of Prof. Dr. Kerstin Lopatta as the SRB Acting Chair. We also look forward to working with the inaugural Chair, Patrick de Cambourg, in the next phases for the ESRS. 

We welcome this first set of draft ESRS which represent a significant step forward. We will further analyse the details and next steps as these standards, once adopted by the EC, will need to: 

• reflect the feedback received from stakeholders during the short public consultation and from the SRB members 

• align with the International Sustainability Standards Board and Global Reporting Initiative standards 
• serve the European public good 
• be operationalised pragmatically to support a just transition. 

We are ready to help engage constructively with the EC, European agencies and bodies in the next steps of the process that lead to the ESRS’ delegated acts finalisation. In our view, the ESRS need to become a pragmatic tool to support the urgent need to move to a sustainable economy; however, we appreciate that reporting alone is only a small part of the change that this requires. 

As the umbrella organisation for 1 million professional accountants, Accountancy Europe is part of the SRB under the European Stakeholders Chapter. See also our: 

• statement welcoming the SRB inaugural Chair 
• statement European sustainability reporting standards: shaping EU’s green future 
• feedback to the first set of draft ESRS  
• letter to Commissioner McGuinness outlining our main comments on these ESRS