The Global Reporting Initiative announced today the launch of its new GRI–ESRS Linkage Service, driven by the need to help companies reporting under its disclosure standards keep in line with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards underpinning the new EU Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive.
GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards are just one of the many globally accepted sets of standards by which corporations report on sustainability issues. The standards were developed to obtain comparability between companies and sectors and to give stakeholders clearer communication about issues related to sustainability. The GRI issued a significant update to the standards in 2021 and has just published new proposed climate change and energy reporting standards, plus a new biodiversity reporting standard. The GRI standards are set and developed by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB).
The European Sustainability Reporting Standards developed by EFRAG, and officially adopted by the European Commission in 2023, established how and what companies should report regarding sustainability-related impacts, opportunities, and risks under the CSRD. The CSRD, which entered into force at the start of 2024, will extend coverage to over 50,000 companies—up from around 12,000 presently—to report on sustainability disclosures and improve reporting details regarding a company’s impact on the environment, human rights and social standards, and sustainability-related risks.
The new service follows an announcement made last year in which the GRI and EFRAG confirmed that they had achieved a high level of interoperability between the ESRS and the GRI Standards. The organizations then said they would increase their cooperation in sustainability reporting, with areas to extend partnership in, inter alia, the development of reporting standards and training. Part of this cooperation will involve launching a GRI-ESRS Interoperability Index, which is a new tool detailing exactly how the disclosure requirements and data points featured in ESRS relate to those in the GRI standards. This prevents the need for “double reporting” for an entity disclosing under both systems.
Under the new service, the GRI will consider a reporting company’s GRI content index and provide feedback on specific GRI–ESRS linkages, including explanation in areas where disclosure does or does not align. The GRI will also provide feedback on ESRS Topical Areas covered by reporting organization material topics disclosures and suggestions on how to structure the ESRS sustainability statement, together with delivering a list of all ESRS data points for which no linkages to GRI standards exist.