Plan to Map the GRI and new European ESRS Sustainability Standards

The European taskforce that developed standards for use in the EU’s new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), one of the most commonly used set of sustainability reporting principles, have formed an agreement to work toward interoperability of the two sets of standards.

In an MoU signed in late November between the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), which has developed the new European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), and the GRI, the two bodies plan to collaborate on standards and guidance development, standards for non-EU companies, work to accredit GRI as an ESRS training organisation, and work towards the interoperability of digital XBRL taxonomies, among other issues. The two bodies also released an interoperability index, prepared from a European perspective, that aims to highlight the commonalities between the two sustainability reporting standards.

The CSDR, which came into force in the EU in early 2023, requires EU corporates in scope of reporting to take account of existing standards, which would include the GRI sustainability disclosure standards. The GRI says its standards are in use by more than 10,000 companies and organisations in over 100 countries. The MoU signed in November follows a statement they both issued in September outlining their plans to work together.

As the new European standards for use under the CSDR fall into use, one of the options the EU could consider is the use of equivalence decisions to recognise other standards as sufficient for the purposes of meeting EU legislative requirements. Regulatory equivalence decisions are commonly used in other policy areas to enable existing standards or regulatory regimes in use elsewhere to satisfy domestic requirements.