In a written answer on 23 June 2026, Financial Services Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque acknowledged that the Omnibus I simplification of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) could reduce banks' access to standardised sustainability data, potentially affecting risk management and sustainable finance. She pointed to a Commission staff working document that cited concerns from the European Central Bank and European supervisory authorities about the complexity of the current framework. The answer responds to a question from MEP Sibylle Berg (NI), who warned that fewer corporate customers reporting under the European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) would force banks to rely on estimated and proxy data, undermining comparability and increasing costs.
Albuquerque outlined several measures to mitigate the impact. The Commission plans to adopt a new voluntary sustainability reporting standard for SMEs (VSME) under the Omnibus I Directive, which should help companies provide sustainability information to financial institutions. The European Single Access Point (ESAP) will also improve access to company data. The European Banking Authority (EBA) has developed simplified draft reporting standards that remove Taxonomy-related disclosures and keep only essential information. The draft simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards, published for feedback on 6 May 2026, allow the use of estimates, and the EBA is extending the possibility to use proxies, estimates and third-party data in certain cases. A Commission report due by April 2029 will assess whether reporting obligations should be extended to additional companies, taking into account the information needs of financial institutions.
the Commission acknowledges the trade-off between reducing reporting burdens on non-financial companies and maintaining data quality for banks. For banks, the reliance on estimates and proxies may increase operational costs and risk of misallocation of capital, while for SMEs, the voluntary standard offers a lighter touch. The delayed review until 2029 means no immediate legislative fix, leaving the EBA and ESAP as the main near-term instruments. The policy orientation leans toward flexibility and proportionality, prioritising burden reduction over data completeness in the short term.