A joint study by WU Vienna and BDO analyses EU-wide reporting under new circumstances.

The Omnibus Package and the Stop the Clock Directive cast a major doubt on the binding nature of the comprehensive sustainability reporting requirements currently envisaged in the EU. A recent study by WU Vienna and BDO analyzes the sustainability reports of 1,000 EU companies for the 2024 fiscal year. Despite recent developments, the majority of companies submit comprehensive reports in accordance with the existing standards.

The study was conducted by BDO in cooperation with the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Sustainability reports from the 2024 fiscal year were analyzed. The sample includes all companies listed on stock exchanges in EU member states that are subject to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD, 2014/95/EU) and thus also to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The reports were collected in April 2025, after the Omnibus Package and the Stop the Clock Directive had been announced. At the time of data collection, not all reports were yet publicly available. The final sample comprises 1,000 companies, of which 721 published their sustainability information in accordance with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).

Key study findings: Companies rely on transparency despite uncertainty

The analysis of 1,000 companies from the first wave in 27 EU Member States and Norway for the 2024 financial year shows:

72% of companies report according to the ESRS, with some significant country-specific differences.

The average length of ESRS sustainability statements is 110 pages, compared to 27 pages for non-ESRS compliant sustainability statements.

Extensive reports can be found mainly in southern countries (e.g. Spain, Italy) – in comparison to Scandinavian countries.

Austrian companies report particularly extensively, averaging 156 pages.

93% of the ESRS sustainability statements were externally audited – more frequently in countries with national implementation.

In more than 95% of ESRS sustainability statements, E1 (climate change), S1 (corporate workforce) and G1 (corporate governance) are identified as material topics.

European sustainability legislation so far

With the adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) at the end of 2022 and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in July 2023, sustainability reporting in the EU reached a new level of bindingness and complexity.

Despite the ambitious objectives, the implementation of the CSRD into national law was not completed in all EU member states by the end of 2024. Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, for example, had not yet implemented the directive by then – the provisions of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (2014/95/EU) continued to apply here. In the remaining member states, the CSRD entered into full force with the 2024 financial year – including the mandatory application of the ESRS and an external audit requirement. Since then, however, critical voices have been growing, calling for a reduction in reporting requirements under the slogans of reducing bureaucracy and costs. The EU responded with the so-called Omnibus Package to simplify sustainability reporting in February 2025 and with the adoption of the "Stop the Clock" Directive in April 2025. In June 2025, EFRAG published its first status report on the planned simplifications under the ESRS. The focus is on five levers for reducing the collection burden, which are based on the principle of “avoiding disproportionate costs and effort” – with the aim of reducing the reporting items by up to 50%.

Outlook: Sustainability reporting as the new normal

Despite political debates and regulatory uncertainties, the analysis clearly shows that sustainability reporting has become part of corporate practice. As uniform European reporting standards, the ESRS make a decisive contribution to the comparability and quality of sustainability information.
"Structured sustainability reporting will continue to play a key role regardless of regulatory relaxations, as stakeholders, markets, and investors increasingly expect transparent, comparable, and credible information," emphasizes Sanela Terko, partner and sustainability reporting expert at BDO. The empirical analysis shows that the ESRS are already widely used as a reporting framework – regardless of national implementation. The high proportion of companies that voluntarily have their sustainability reports externally audited further underscores the importance of quality-assured communication with report recipients.

Katrin Hummel, Professor of Accounting & Reporting at WU, emphasizes that topics such as climate change, the company's own workforce, and corporate governance are considered material by almost all companies across all industries. At the same time, there is still room to catch up on the topic of biodiversity, as this is likely to gain in importance in the future. "Targeted investments in sustainability not only strengthen a company's ESG positioning but also promote the resilience, competitiveness, and future viability of the business model as a whole," emphasizes Sanela Terko.