Did the Non-Financial Reporting Directive 2014/95/EU have an impact on CSR reporting?

Abstract

In recent years, sustainability reporting has started to become common practice for companies. Whether it is under the pressure from stakeholders or as a result of various regulations implemented in EU Member States, companies have started to disclose the impact of their activities on environmental and social matters. While this practice was most often done on a voluntary basis, the European Commission introduced in 2014 the Non-Financial Reporting Directive 2014/95/EU with the objective of making sustainability reporting mandatory for large companies in Europe and providing guidance on the form and content their report should take. By encouraging more companies to disclose their impacts on the world, the European Commission has the goal to achieve a high level of trust, standardization and comparability of non-financial reporting in Europe.

The aim of this thesis is therefore to analyze the impact of CSR reporting since the introduction of the Directive 2014/95/EU and to depict the current level of sustainability in the market. Through content analysis and the conduct of interviews, our findings provided interesting insights on the topic and recommendations for the future of non-financial reporting.