Sustainability · September 2026
After simplification, what evidence is still worth building?
A narrower reporting duty does not eliminate the need to answer a customer, lender or investor credibly.
What changed
The EU’s 2026 legislation narrowed mandatory corporate sustainability reporting to much larger companies. A further amendment to the reporting standards was published in September 2026 and is due to take effect in November. Neither development makes every supplier undertake a full statutory reporting exercise; neither stops a buyer, bank or investor from asking for useful information.
The decision behind the request
A firm might receive a questionnaire covering emissions, workforce matters and governance. Some questions reflect the requester’s own duties, some reflect purchasing or lending policy, and others may be broader than the transaction warrants. Before commissioning a report, management should identify the audience, the immediate business decision and the claims it can actually support.
A proportionate response
The European Commission has recommended a voluntary sustainability reporting standard for SMEs to ease repeated information requests from larger companies and financial institutions. That offers a practical reference point, though the right scope still depends on the business and relationship. A reusable evidence base can reduce duplicated work and support consistent answers across tenders, financing and customer discussions.
Our view
The measure of a good response is whether a recipient can rely on the information and whether management can use it. A polished document without clear sources, ownership or limits to its claims will do little for either purpose.