Joint letter from DRSC and AFRAC on the VSME to the European Commission

On 21 March 2025, the Accounting Standards Committee of Germany (DRSC) and the Austrian Financial Reporting Advisory Committee (AFRAC) jointly submitted a letter to the European Commission, highlighting unclear wording in the VSME (Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for non-listed SMEs) that were identified during the translation work of the joint project group.

Along with this letter, DRSC and AFRAC have submitted an informal German translation of the first 65 paragraphs of the VSME to the European Commission, prepared by the joint project group. The document contains all comments on unclear wording related to these paragraphs of the VSME.
These insights aim to support the European Commission in developing a recommendation for voluntary sustainability reporting based on the VSME, ensuring it is clear, understandable, and feasible to implement. This recommendation forms part of the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directives 2006/43/EC, 2013/34/EU, (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 (Omnibus I – COM(2025)81), which was announced on 26 February 2025.

At the same time, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in German-speaking countries now have the opportunity to explore the VSME, which EFRAG submitted to the European Commission on 17 December 2024.

In addition to translating the VSME, the DRSC/AFRAC project group is also systematically compiling translated technical terms (English-German) from Set 1 of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and working on the German translation of EFRAG IG 3: List of ESRS Data Points.