Bucharest, February 20, 2020: The European Commission announced a few days ago, in a conference organized in Brussels by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency on the status of non-financial reporting at the European Union level, that by the end of 2020, it will carry out a proposal for a substantial modification of the Directive 2014/95/EU on the reporting of non-financial information.
These changes derive, on one hand, from the need to align with the climate neutrality objective of the continent promoted by the New Green Deal, but also from the unsatisfactory performance of companies in the last two years in reporting non-financial information. “At the conference, it was stressed the need to develop a common reporting standard at the European Union level allowing a higher comparability of non-financial performance of companies within the same sector, establishing a verification process that would increase the accuracy of the information and increasing the relevancy of the non-financial information included in the reports”, says Mihaela Croitoru, Managing Partner INNOVA Project Consulting.
Moreover, the position of the European Commission is also strengthened and supported by the results of the research carried out by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency on a sample of 1,000 companies selected from all Member States. According to the report, at European level, very few companies included in the reports non-financial key indicators, only approx. 25% presented a description of the risks deriving from the sustainability issues, and only 4% described the results of the management approach of human rights aspects. At the same time, the analysis also highlights that within the reports there are included too much information that are not material for understanding the sustainability performance of companies.
Regarding Romania, the reporting of non-financial information has not yet reached a sufficiently high level of quality, considering that only one of the 11 companies included in the research process provides adequate Information on policies, outcomes, risks, and KPIs are provided in a clear structure. However, one aspect that positions us better than other states is the fact that 9 of the 11 companies have included in their reports climate change policies, and 10 companies have included non-financial key performance indicators. “The results confirm the analysis that our company has carried out since last year. It is clear that additional effort is needed from Romanian companies to increase the quality of non-financial reporting, which can only be done through robust analysis processes that aim at both setting clear goals and targets for sustainability, as well as identifying the risks and opportunities that derive from it ”, says Gaetano Casale, Managing Partner INNOVA Project Consulting.
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