Sustainability reporting

In Germany, the obligation to prepare sustainability reporting (corporate sustainable reporting) will no longer apply only to public interest entities, but will increasingly be applied to medium-sized companies as well. Against the background of current developments at national and EU-level, it can be assumed that corporate financial reporting, consisting in particular of the annual financial statements and the management report (‘Lagebericht’), will have to be supplemented by elements of sustainability reporting in the future.

We at EBS have dealt extensively with the current challenges and legislative developments and can provide our clients with targeted and efficient support in meeting these new challenges. In doing so, we combine our core competencies in auditing and advising companies on financial reporting with the expertise we have acquired in sustainability reporting to provide an optimal range of services.

The implementation of European legal requirements for sustainability reporting (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, EU Taxonomy, etc.) will require the collection and processing of relevant corporate data, which will have to be generated in addition to conventional accounting data as part of corporate reporting processes. In this context, as part of our consulting services, we offer an individual analysis of the sustainability reporting requirements relevant to the company and support the introduction of determination and collection systems for generating the required information and data from the corporate reporting processes.

Of course, we also offer our support in the preparation of a sustainability report, taking into account considerations on the application of appropriate standards for sustainability reporting.

With the increasing expansion of the sustainability reporting obligations for companies, there will also be additional obligations to have this information audited by an external expert. As auditors, we are specialists in auditing reporting information within the framework of financial reporting. In addition, based on recognized international auditing standards, we can already offer assurance services for the validation of your sustainability reporting, which is generally recognized and also appropriately confirmed by a corresponding audit certificate. We therefore offer companies preparing a (voluntary) sustainability report to engage us with the corresponding audit. This can be done as part of an engagement to audit the annual financial statements and management report. However, you can of course also engage us to conduct a separate audit of the sustainability report only.