https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/research-on-companie...

The key finding is that despite timid progress, companies’ sustainability disclosures remain too focused on general information and lack specific and meaningful data on risks, targets and key indicators. The research complements landmark studies published by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency and Frank Bold in previous years, which are tracking how large companies are implementing the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive. The Commission’s proposal seeks to reform this legislation that requires large companies to disclose their sustainability risks and impacts, but fails to provide detailed disclosure requirements.

As the EU experiences a tectonic shift in finance and climate policies in support of a more sustainable and responsible economic model, this brings risks and opportunities of unprecedented scale for all sectors of the economy. The lack of reliable and useful data puts at risk the EU sustainable finance strategy as well as the achievement of the objectives set in the EU Green Deal. Without the right insights from companies’ sustainability performance, it won’t be possible to scale up sustainable finance or increase corporate accountability. 

For this reason, the European Commission has proposed a new framework to improve and better focus disclosure via the introduction of mandatory sustainability reporting standards, which should enter into force in 2023 and help companies disclose key data that their stakeholders, NGOs and the financial markets need...

...The analysis of key climate and human rights disclosures of 250 companies from high risk sectors (1) in Germany, Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic shows progress in reporting science-based climate targets (2) and describing companies’ human rights due diligence process (3), although still only a minority of companies provide such disclosures. 

Furthermore, only half of the companies reported climate-related risks, and a vast majority are still lagging behind when it comes to providing more specific climate information as needed by investors, such as GHG Scope 3 emissions (4), or accounted for different time horizons in their assessment of climate risks. 

When it comes to specific information on human rights matters, 85% of companies assessed did not describe specific risks of human rights impacts linked to their value chain and almost none described the management of such risks or the engagement of affected stakeholders.

The data also reveals important gaps between the analysed countries - in most cases, the Czech Republic and Poland stay far below the average values...