Corporate sustainability reporting – state of play and challenges

Abstract

The transition towards sustainability requires adoption of a new approach for doing business and creating value that involves substantial investments, qualified and skilled implementing teams and innovative governance models. In order to accelerate it, the European Union adopted unprecedentedly ambitious legislative framework aiming to induce a large-scale transformation, which is fully documented and reported. These developments impose serious challenges - on the enterprises, as they shall invest mostly in compliance instead in competitiveness, on their staff being at the front line of the transition and on all the experts that shall do the reporting, verification and auditing the performance. The paper aims at analyzing ESG legislation influence on the enterprises’ activity, especially on SMEs, performance and accounting, at outlining relevant challenges and drawing opportunities for overcoming them and at formulating relevant proposals.