ESG, taxonomy & sustainability reporting

The aim is to develop uniform standards for the sustainability assessment of specific economic activities. Mandatory sustainability reporting is intended to make the results transparent and comparable in order to steer capital flows towards environmentally sustainable business models and investments. This is also intended to counteract the currently widespread practice of greenwashing. The relevant European legal acts, the Taxonomy Regulation and the amended Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), are already linked by their scope of application and must be considered together by companies. From 1 January 2027, so-called large companies in Germany, which were not previously subject to these requirements, will be subject to obligations under this regulation. The publication of taxonomy indicators forms part of the CSRD reporting requirements.

Some of the regulations are extremely complex, as illustrated by the previous delegated regulations with their technical assessment criteria for implementing the environmental objectives of the Taxonomy Regulation and the reporting standards (European Sustainability Reporting Standards – ESRS) of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG). The specific requirements for assessing an economic activity as sustainable often go far beyond the current legal situation and frequently require detailed knowledge in specific areas of law, such as climate protection law, circular economy law, water law, ecodesign and resource efficiency, or chemicals law. We have decades of consulting experience in all these areas of law. Successful consulting on the assessment and improvement of a company's sustainability performance is necessarily interdisciplinary. It is based on highly specialised expertise in environmental and product law.