The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) announced on Thursday 8 July that it has undertaken the necessary preparations to immediately start the development of European non-financial reporting standards (see EUROPE 12703/10).
In order to meet the Commission’s ambition to have a first set of standards in 2022, this will initially be done by the EFRAG working group, which was established in September 2020 to carry out the preparatory work (see EUROPE 12554/21) and renamed ‘Project Task Force on European Sustainability Reporting Standards’ (PTF-ESRS), which will take the lead.
“The elaboration of the technical advice to the European Commission on EU sustainability reporting standards starts immediately with a view to progress swiftly and to hand over what will be achieved in the coming months to the sustainability reporting bodies of EFRAG as soon as established and operational”, explained Patrick de Cambourg, Chairman of the Task Force, in a statement.
In an interview with EUROPE last May (see EUROPE 12711/5), Jean-Paul Gauzès, Chairman of the EFRAG Board, had already mentioned his intention to set up a “shadow EFRAG” to start work, pending the reform of EFRAG’s governance (see EUROPE 12673/18).
Most of the 35 members of the former working group have expressed their willingness to participate in the new Task Force. Some changes have been organised to “fill the gaps”, says EFRAG, which is still looking for new recruits. In addition, a secretariat of about 20 full-time staff has been set up.
The Task Force’s launch plenary meeting took place on 9 June and set out the work objectives, agreed on a ‘cluster’ organisation, and agreed to align the work with the timetable of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the timetable of EFRAG’s governance reform. The first two plenary meetings of the group have been scheduled for 5 and 19 July.
See the composition of the new Task Force: https://bit.ly/36qJ2DG (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)