The Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Fairtrade International and the World Fair Trade Organization-Europe welcome the publication of the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) Delegated Act and appreciate the considerable technical work undertaken by the European Commission and EFRAG experts to simplify and streamline the standards while preserving their core objectives. 

The Fair Trade Movement particularly welcomes the improvements made in relation to adding the reference to the ILO conclusions on estimating a living wage in ESRS S1, which align the ESRS with regulatory developments in this topic. Further, we appreciate the clarification in ESRS 1 Chapter 7.4 that information availability and coverage are expected to improve over time, which was a shortcoming of a previous exposure draft of the ESRS. This addition as proposed by EFRAG should be maintained. 

At the same time, we believe several targeted clarifications and amendments remain necessary to ensure legal coherence, comparability and decision-usefulness of the standards, including coherence with Directive (EU) 2024/1760 on corporate sustainability due diligence (“CSDDD”). 

Read our joint feedback to the European Commission's public consultation here.

Get in touch

For more information about our work around the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), please contact Alena Kahle at kahle@fairtrade-advocacy.org.