How GRI supports policymakers in strengthening corporate accountability 

Governments are increasingly writing ESG disclosure into financial regulation and stock exchange listing rules. GRI publishes guidance for policymakers on how to introduce mandatory sustainability reporting while keeping data consistent and comparable across sectors and jurisdictions.

Example: India’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR)

• The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has required its top 1,000 listed companies by market capitalisation to report sustainability information through the BRSR framework since the 2022-23 financial year.
• GRI, with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and BSI, has published a linkage that maps BRSR disclosures to the GRI Standards, and SEBI accepts cross-referencing between the two, so a company can meet the national requirement and report against a global standard at the same time.

GRI’s approach to due diligence is built on two international references:

• OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
• United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)

Both expect companies to identify, prevent and address risks to people and the environment, including across their supply chains. GRI disclosures give companies a consistent way to show how they manage those risks.

Example: European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)

• The CSDDD requires large companies in scope to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence across their operations and value chains. Its scope and timing were scaled back by the EU’s 2026 Omnibus package: the thresholds now capture companies with at least 5,000 employees and more than €1.5 billion in worldwide turnover, with transposition due by July 2028.
• Companies in scope report through the EU framework, the CSRD and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), not through GRI. GRI still helps, because the ESRS are designed to work with the GRI Standards, so impact data prepared for GRI can feed EU reporting.

GRI 207: Tax is the GRI Standard for tax transparency, and it sits alongside international efforts to curb profit shifting:

• OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) recommendations 
• EU’s Public Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) Directive

The EU directive requires large multinationals to publish what they pay in tax in each EU country and in certain other jurisdictions.

Example: European Union’s Public CbCR Directive

• The EU Public CbCR Directive mandates that large corporations disclose their country-by-country tax payments, ensuring greater transparency in corporate taxation. 
• GRI 207 gives companies a consistent way to disclose their tax approach and their payments country by country, so the information is comparable across markets.

A 2024 study by GRI and the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) tested whether GRI reporting is associated with stronger social performance. Using WBA’s Social Benchmark of around 2,000 large companies, it found:

• companies that publish a sustainability report with a GRI Content Index scored at least 47% higher on WBA’s Core Social Indicators than companies that did not.
• companies reporting ‘in accordance with’ the GRI Standards consistently outperformed those reporting only ‘with reference to’ them.

Adoption is now close to universal among large listed companies:

• 99% of S&P 500 companies published a sustainability report for 2024, up from 98.6% for 2023, according to the Governance & Accountability Institute. Around 55% of Russell 1000 reporters used the GRI Standards.
• India’s SEBI BRSR is cross-referenced to GRI, and the Johannesburg (JSE) and Brazilian (B3) exchanges reference GRI in their sustainability reporting guidance.