Dsince the adoption, the November 10the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, CSRD) by the European Parliament, a wave of panic is blowing over European companies, which, for the vast majority of them, were not hitherto affected by the obligations to disseminate social and environmental information.
The CSRD becomes one of the cornerstones of the European Green Deal, the objective of which is to promote a sustainable economy in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The various components of the sustainable finance plan, which accompany the Green Deal, are proving to be new incentives to publish more social and environmental information, above all in a logic of compliance with legal texts.
However, the proliferation of obligations to publish social and environmental information or extra-financial reporting often obscures the need for companies to carry out a strategic analysis of the social and environmental issues of their activities.
Strategy and reporting are linked
With the provisions of the CSRD, which will come into force gradually from January 2024, nearly 50,000 companies will be affected by disclosure obligations. CSRD requirements are also more specific and require a higher degree of expertise.
First, because extra-financial performance indicators will be standardized. Then because the extra-financial information will have to answer the question “how the company’s business model and strategy take into account the interests of stakeholders and the impact of the company on sustainability issues”.
The CSRD thus recalls that strategy and reporting are linked. What seems obvious in the field of finance must also be verified in that of corporate social responsibility (CSR)! And the ever-increasing incentives and obligations to publish social and environmental information must not make investors and companies forget that the relevant extra-financial performance indicators are those resulting from the CSR strategy undertaken, which alone gives meaning to the purpose of the activities.
The European Commission in 2011 defines CSR as “the responsibility of companies vis-à-vis the effects they have on society”, thus questioning the impact of the activities of these companies. By being at the business-society interface, CSR places concern for people and the planet in the decision-making field of managers.
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