On 3 July the European Commission formally adopted the revised ESRS. No more “it’s coming”. It’s done. And with it, mandatory datapoints drop by 60%: from today’s 1,144 to around 500. The total falls by 70%.
The easy headline and the caveat that matters
The headline everyone will repeat over the coming weeks is “fewer datapoints, less work”. True, but incomplete.
What gets simplified is the generic part. What does not change is the disclosure in the areas where your company has a material impact. Translated: if you have material climate risks, ESRS E1 wasn’t simplified for you. The relief is real for companies with contained impacts, and far more modest for those with strong environmental materiality.
So the first question isn’t “how many datapoints are they cutting?”. It’s “where am I material?”. Because that’s where you’ll still be reporting at the same level of detail as before.
Where the text sits now
The revised ESRS are in the Parliament and Council scrutiny period: a two-month window, extendable to four. Publication in the Official Journal of the EU is expected in Q4 2026.
The application timelines:
- Mandatory: FY2027.
- Voluntary early adoption: FY2026, once the text is published in the OJEU.
In parallel, the public consultation on the revised standards is open for a few more days. If your company wants a say in the final version, now is the moment.
The transitional third option almost nobody is covering
Here’s the nuance that isn’t in the headlines. The final text adds a third transitional route for FY2026, on top of the two obvious ones (apply the old ESRS or wait for the new).
The third option: apply the “old” ESRS but bring in eight specific reliefs from the new standard. For example, top-down materiality, which lets you approach the analysis from management’s perspective rather than sweeping up every datapoint from the bottom.
For a sustainability team that already has its CSRD reporting process running, this is gold: you don’t have to choose between redoing everything on the new standard or keeping the old one whole. You can keep your base and ease the heaviest points. Few people are explaining it, and it’s probably the most practical call for this cycle.
And the little sibling: the VSME
Inside the same 3 July package sits the voluntary standard for SMEs (VSME). Modular structure, Basic plus Complete, with a value-chain cap for companies under 1,000 employees, applicable from FY2027.
Why does it matter even if you’re not an SME? Because the VSME is the door through which your smaller suppliers can give you structured data for your own Scope 3. It stops being an improvised spreadsheet and becomes a standard. Less friction for you.
What this means in practice
Every time a standard changes, the temptation is to treat it as a new project: remap datapoints, revise templates, reshuffle who reports what. And with each change, you start from scratch.
That’s exactly the problem you avoid when the data is structured once. If your environmental data, energy, materials, waste, suppliers, lives in a traceable data model rather than twenty spreadsheets, a change of standard stops being a fire. That is what automated data collection delivers: mapping to the new ESRS is an output layer, not a rebuild.
CSRD, ESRS 2026, VSME: they’re different ways of reading the same data. The question was never how many datapoints they ask for. It’s whether your data is ready to answer any of them without starting over.
What to do this week
Three concrete moves:
- Identify your material areas. No simplification there. That’s where you’ll keep investing reporting effort.
- Decide your route for FY2026. Old standard, new, or the third option with reliefs. For most, the third is the sensible one.
- Check whether your data is structured or scattered. That’s what decides whether the next standard change is an adjustment or a three-month project.
Regulation will keep moving. Your data shouldn’t have to move with it. If you want to see how this looks in practice, request a demo.