Directive (EU) 2026/470 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Directive (EU) 2026/470 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 February 2026 amending Directives 2006/43/EC, 2013/34/EU, (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards certain corporate sustainability reporting requirements and certain corporate sustainability due diligence requirements (OJ L, 2026/470, 26.2.2026, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2026/470/oj) (Omnibus I Directive).²) amended Directive 2013/34/EU by – inter alia – reducing the number of undertakings required to report sustainability information under Articles 19a and 29a of that Directive and simplifying the sustainability reporting requirements.

To facilitate the voluntary reporting of sustainability information by undertakings that are not subject to mandatory sustainability reporting requirements under Directive 2013/34/EU as amended by Directive (EU) 2026/470, that Directive requires the Commission to adopt a sustainability reporting standard for voluntary use. That standard should also act as a ‘value chain cap’, prohibiting entities reporting sustainability information under Articles 19a and 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU from requiring information exceeding the limits provided by the standard from undertakings in their value chain that do not exceed the average number of 1 000 employees during the preceding financial year.

The standard for voluntary use adopted in this Regulation is based on the standard adopted under Commission Recommendation (EU) 2025/1710 (Commission Recommendation (EU) 2025/1710 of 30 July 2025 on a voluntary sustainability reporting standard for small and medium-sized undertakings (OJ L, 2025/1710, 5.8.2025, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reco/2025/1710/oj).³) and maintains its modular structure consisting of a basic module and a comprehensive module. The standard for voluntary use contains different kinds of datapoints, including essential datapoints that an undertaking needs to report when applying the standard, datapoints that are only needed in certain specified circumstances, datapoints that are voluntary, and datapoints that are to be considered only when reporting sector-specific information. Furthermore, to ensure that the standard is proportionate for undertakings of different sizes, certain datapoints should be voluntary for undertakings with 10 employees or less, even though they are essential datapoints for other undertakings applying the standard.

It is necessary to set out how the value chain cap should work considering the different kinds of datapoints that the standard contains. It is also necessary to ensure an appropriate balance between protecting undertakings in the value chain from excessive information demands and ensuring that the application of the value chain cap does not imply unnecessary additional burden for undertakings subject to the mandatory sustainability reporting requirements. Therefore, only essential datapoints should be covered by the value chain cap. To enhance clarity, the disclosures covered by the value chain cap should be set out in a dedicated list, which should distinguish between the disclosures constituting the cap for undertakings with more than 10 employees and those constituting the cap for undertakings with 10 employees or fewer. It is important that undertakings subject to mandatory sustainability reporting requirements under Directive 2013/34/EU only request information from undertakings in their value chain insofar as they need that information, and that they request less information than specified in the standard for voluntary use if they do not need all the information in that standard. The value chain cap only applies to information gathering carried out for the purpose of reporting sustainability information under national law transposing Directive 2013/34/EU and should therefore not affect requests for information needed to comply with obligations stemming from other Union or national law, under the conditions set out therein.

From the date of entry into force of this Regulation, Recommendation (EU) 2025/1710 should be considered as no longer producing any legal effects. However, financial institutions, financial market participants, insurance undertakings and credit institutions, are still encouraged to limit as far as possible their requests for sustainability information from undertakings with 1 000 employees or less for purposes beyond sustainability reporting under Directive 2013/34/EU to the information specified in Annex I to this Regulation. Member States are also encouraged to raise awareness among undertakings with 1 000 employees or less about the benefits of voluntarily reporting sustainability information in accordance with Annex I to this Regulation, and take appropriate measures at national level to foster the implementation and acceptance of the standard as well as to support the automatic digitalisation of voluntary sustainability reporting based on the standard. To minimise compliance costs, undertakings applying this standard are not obliged to seek assurance for the information that they report.

To provide undertakings subject to the mandatory sustainability reporting requirements of Directive 2013/34/EU with appropriate time to prepare for the application of the new requirements, this voluntary sustainability reporting standard should apply with respect to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027.

To enable undertakings not subject to the mandatory sustainability reporting requirements of Directive 2013/34/EU to benefit from this voluntary sustainability reporting standard as soon as possible, this Regulation should enter into force on the third day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

In accordance with Article 49(3a) of Directive 2013/34/EU, prior to the adoption of this Regulation the Commission consulted experts designated by each Member State in accordance with the principles laid down in the Interinstitutional Agreement of 13 April 2016 on Better Law-Making (Interinstitutional Agreement between the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission on Better Law-Making (OJ L 123, 12.5.2016, p. 1, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/agree_interinstit/2016/512/oj).⁴),

‘value chain cap’ means the upper limit of sustainability information which undertakings subject to Articles 19a and 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU may require from undertakings in their value chain which do not exceed, on their balance sheet date, an average number of 1 000 employees during the preceding financial year.