European Commission: Proposals to reduce administrative burdens of corporate reporting

On 17 October 2023, the European Commission published its work programme for 2024, which includes the objective of reducing the administrative burden of reporting requirements under EU legislation by 25% across the board, without compromising the policy objectives behind the respective EU legislation. In particular, four measures are intended to support this objective:

1. Accounting Directive (Directive 2013/34/EU): Adjustment of the size criteria for companies by approx. 25 %. For this purpose, a delegated act was adopted by the European Commission on 17 October 2023.
2. Accounting Directive: Announced postponement of the adoption of sector-specific ESRS.
3. Environmental Taxonomy Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2020/852): Announced clarification that taxonomy disclosures on immaterial economic activities do not have to be reported.
4. Consultation: collecting proposals from stakeholders which EU rules on corporate reporting should be simplified or removed.

The 2024 work programme contains many more individual measures on corporate reporting in particular, and on a wide range of other topics in general. The work programme and accompanying documents are available here.