7 August, 2026

After months of rewrites and regulatory whiplash, the new and simplified ESRS is out, right in the middle of the summer lull. Most of the changes are what they claim to be: real simplification.

The shift is less about content and more about how that content is organised and presented, with requirements reorganised, application guidance sitting closer to the disclosures it supports, and most voluntary content gone or folded in.

The double materiality assessment is the clearest example, and one of the biggest reliefs. The first companies to report under ESRS had to infer what a defensible process looked like, and that guesswork made the DMA far more complicated than it needed to be. It’s still robust, just now anchored to reasonable effort and faithful presentation.

Elsewhere, the direction is more mixed. Take climate. Specific topics are more visible, disclosures on risk and resilience are clearer, and the standard asks for stronger disclosure overall. But one of the most talked-about changes concerns boundary-setting for GHG emissions, where companies can now choose between a financial or operational control basis, which is easier for them but could undercut comparability and rigour.

The social standards saw the opposite effect in places: methodology got more stringent, and restructuring made key topics less visible. Wage benchmarking is now tied to ILO guidance rather than the voluntary frameworks companies relied on before. And grievance and remediation have been folded into general stakeholder engagement, undermining the role they play in protecting human rights.

Biodiversity is where restructuring may have gone too far. Everywhere else, the bar stayed put and the structure became more effective. Here, the bar came down from what standards such as TNFD, SBTN and GRI have been working to advance, with dependencies, thresholds and allocation, resilience, community consultation and anticipated financial effects all removed. That’s what made the standard interesting in the first place, and it no longer sets the pace on nature.

While we could write dissertations about the nitty gritty of these changes, we’ve kept this to the highlights, so you can stay informed without wading through all of it. Over the coming weeks we’ll go deeper on individual standards, so if there’s an area you’d like us to prioritise, we’d love to hear it.

By Mariana Garcia