European Parliament approves Directive on non-financial reporting of businesses

This new Directive will require public interest entities with more than 500 employees to provide a non-financial statement containing information relating to the impact of the undertaking on the environment, social aspects, respect of human rights, anti-corruption and bribery matters.

The new reporting requirements will concern nearly 6000 European businesses, mostly listed undertakings, credit institutions and insurance companies.

Raffaele Baldassarre MEP, Rapporteur on the proposal for the European Parliament, said: "The text adopted today strikes a good balance between the necessity for more transparency and the importance of limiting the administrative burden for companies. Accordingly, undertakings will also be allowed to present the information in a separate report and to freely choose among the reporting standards."

"The demand by investors and civil society for greater transparency and accountability of undertakings is growing. The new rules will enable forward-looking business leaders to address this demand and to fully make use of the huge potential of corporate social responsibility in order to increase their competitiveness while contributing to smart and sustainable growth in Europe", added Baldassarre.

The new rules will also require companies to provide a description of their diversity policy in relation to their administrative, management and supervisory bodies concerning aspects such as age, gender, educational and professional background. Accordingly, undertakings will have to describe the objectives of the diversity policy, how it has been implemented and the outcome obtained in the reporting period. If no such policy is put in place by the undertaking, the statement shall contain an explanation as to why this is the case.