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On 25 April 2026, the European Commission adopted a delegated regulation setting out the procedural rules for fines and periodic penalty payments that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) may impose on ESG rating providers under Regulation (EU) 2024/3005. The delegated act fills one of the final gaps in…

The VSME standard that exists today — two modules, 20 disclosures, no materiality assessment, an “if applicable” principle — looks nothing like the version EFRAG first put out for consultation. The journey from a three-module exposure draft with a full materiality requirement to the streamlined Commission Recommendation adopted in July…

When EFRAG issued the VSME standard in December 2024, it did not stop at publishing a PDF. It also released a Digital Template — an Excel workbook that SMEs can fill in and convert to machine-readable XBRL format — alongside an open-source XBRL taxonomy and an online converter. Now at…

Regulation & Policy The EU has formally clarified: sustainable finance is compatible with defence. What does this mean for investors, reporting, and ESG data? Commission Notice C/2025/4950 and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1775 redraw the line between security and ESG—narrowing automatic exclusions and reframing defence as a contributor to social sustainability.…

The VSME and ESRS are not competing standards. They are part of a single reporting architecture designed by EFRAG to serve different sizes of company within the same sustainability data ecosystem. Large companies report under ESRS. Non-listed SMEs report voluntarily under the VSME. The critical connection between the two is…

On 21–22 April 2026, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Regional Forum on Sustainable Development convened in Geneva to assess how member states are advancing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Switzerland, as host country, used the forum to highlight both its domestic implementation and its international cooperation…

For banks, asset managers and insurers, ESG data collection from small and medium-sized counterparts has been an expensive, manual and unreliable process. Each institution designs its own questionnaire, sends it to hundreds or thousands of SME borrowers and suppliers, and then spends weeks reconciling inconsistent responses into a structure that…

Learn the key differences between the VSME Basic and Comprehensive modules to determine exactly which sustainability reporting tier your business needs based on your stakeholders’ data demands.

Regulatory update · 7 May 2026 European Commission publishes draft simplified ESRS for public feedback The delegated act amending Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 proposes a 61% cut to mandatory datapoints, a redesigned materiality framework, and voluntary early adoption from FY 2026. Stakeholders have until 3 June 2026 to respond. On…

The Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for non-listed SMEs (VSME) is a reporting framework issued by EFRAG in December 2024 and adopted as a European Commission Recommendation on 30 July 2025. It gives small and medium-sized enterprises a single, standardised way to respond to ESG data requests from banks, investors and…