ESRA to Drive European Sustainability Reporting

Helle Bank Jørgensen, chair of ESRA and Partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers explained: “The launch is very timely as more and more companies disclose how they comply with the growing demand from stakeholders to take responsibility and operate transparently, by issuing sustainability reports outlining their social and environmental policies and performance.”
The aim of this new, exciting ESRA project is to improve sustainability reporting in Europe. Each European participant (all committed sustainability experts) provides a summary of their respective country’s reporting developments. These reports, along with key regional statistics provided by Corporate Register, have today been launched on the new ESRA website – www.sustainabilityreporting.eu

Robert Strauss, head of unit in DG Employment at the European Commission says: “This is a particularly useful project as it acts as an information source for anyone wanting information on European sustainability reporting. It also drives performance improvements and enables countries and individual reporters to compare their performance with other reporting regions and potentially learn new best practice methods and trends that could be implemented in their own reporting.”

Participating countries in this pilot year are the UK, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden, along with a contribution from Robert Strauss describing the overall situation in Europe. There are plans to invite other European countries to participate in the 2007 project.

Vicky McAllister, social and environmental project co-ordinator at ACCA and the UK’s participant in ESRA says “These reports will be useful for companies, governments and assurance providers to benchmark sustainability reporting practices against other countries, for example, there is a clear trend towards integrated financial and sustainability reporting, to varying degrees for each country. The UK is one of the countries who are moving towards this method of reporting, with many large listed companies including detailed sustainability information in their Annual Reports, some even integrating their entire report. SRI analysts can also consult the website to get an overall picture of which European countries are ahead in the field of sustainability reporting”