EFRAG publishes the revised and simplified Exposure Drafts of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), launching a to gather feedback from stakeholders across the EU corporate reporting ecosystem.
This major step follows the European Commission’s Omnibus initiative and its formal request to EFRAG in March 2025 to deliver a critical simplification to the ESRS adopted in 2023. The objective: make sustainability reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) more manageable while preserving its relevance and alignment with the European Green Deal.
Following extensive feedback from companies already reporting under the CSRD as well as those preparing to do so, EFRAG focused on cutting complexity and improving usability. Drawing upon over 800 survey responses and stakeholder engagements, EFRAG applied top-down simplification strategies and levers together with a bottom-up detailed review of all datapoints. This includes streamlining the double materiality assessment, reducing overlaps across standards, clarifying language and structure, and removing all voluntary disclosures. New relief mechanisms have also been introduced, such as exemptions where reporting would cause undue cost or effort.
In total, mandatory datapoints (to be reported if material) have been cut by 57%, and the full set of disclosures—mandatory and voluntary—reduced by 68%. The overall length of the standards has been shortened by over 55%, making ESRS more accessible and implementable, especially for companies that will be in the scope of the CSRD beyond the ones that reported already on financial year 2024.
Public Consultation Now Open
The public consultation runs from 31 July to 29 September 2025. Stakeholders—including preparers, auditors, civil society, investors, and national authorities—are invited to review the revised drafts and share their views.
To support robust dialogue, EFRAG will organise or co-organise outreach events throughout September and October, gathering further feedback ahead of its final technical advice to the European Commission, due by 30 November 2025.
In parallel, EFRAG performs a cost benefit analysis and targeted field tests which are also open to participation from stakeholders.
Patrick de Cambourg, Chair of the EFRAG Sustainability Reporting Board: “EFRAG is fully aligned with the strategic vision set out by the European Commission. These revisions aim to deliver what Europe needs at this moment: a more focused, more usable sustainability reporting system that remains ambitious but does not overburden companies. Capitalising on effective experience, this is about making ESRS a more workable reality—so that sustainability reporting supports, rather than hinders, resilience, investment, and long-term value creation.”
Chiara Del Prete, Chair of the EFRAG Sustainability Reporting Technical Expert Group: “The Exposure Drafts that we put in consultation today are the result of an intense period of input gathering and internal discussions. Thanks to the extensive dialogue we have had over the past few months with all the interested stakeholders, we could base the simplification of the ESRS on the lessons learnt in their application. We focused our effort in the short timeframe available on the most pressing issues. We now look forward to continuing this dialogue and receiving the comments of our stakeholders on what we propose.”
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