Deloitte study: the first year of ESG reporting in accordance with CSRD was challenging for companies, because of the complexity of the sustainability-related financial information required

Bucharest, December 22, 2025 – The first year of reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) proved to be challenging for most Central European (CE) companies, especially due to the complexity of the financial information related to ESG (environment, social, and governance), on which companies were able to present limited data, according to the Deloitte report “Connecting the dots: ESG and Finance. Auditor’s Perspective on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) Reports in Central Europe”, conducted among reporting entities active in nine CE countries, including Romania. The benchmarking study was conducted among large companies and public interest reporting entities active in 11 industry sectors. Most companies’ sustainability data is not closely integrated with financial information, and those analyzed by the study frequently emphasized their limited ability to calculate or estimate the sustainability-related financial information in their disclosures.

The report especially highlights difficulty in reporting capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) required to implement the actions planned related to specific ESG topics. For instance, only 42% of the reports analyzed across Central Europe provided quantitative data related to CapEx/OpEx, 14%, data related to workforce, and 13%, data related to resource use and circular economy.

“Sustainability reporting implies extracting insights from ESG-related information and facts and turning them into valuable business data. In fact, entities reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards have a real opportunity to connect sustainability reporting with financial reports, since financial reporting standards increasingly require climate-related information. This connection contributes to risk management improvement and to long-term financial stability and it enables organizations to take a strategic approach to ESG,” stated Corina Dimitriu, Audit & Assurance Partner, Deloitte Romania.

Although it is not a common practice in the CE at present, the report reveals that almost half of the analyzed companies (44%) have included sustainability-related incentives in management remuneration covering performance indicators across all the three areas – environment, social and governance. The KPIs concerning the environmental area included most commonly decarbonization and energy efficiency, indicators related to social area were most frequently linked to diversity, equity and inclusion, while, in the governance area, most common KPIs included ESG-related risk management. Among the industry sectors analyzed by the report, financial services stands out, as 64% of companies link managerial remuneration with ESG performance indicators. In Romania, the share of analyzed companies which have implemented ESG-related remuneration policies for their management teams stood above the regional average, at 53%.

“Despite the challenges encountered, the first year of reporting as per CSRD requirements demonstrated companies’ capacity to adapt. Sustainability reporting is a long-term requirement that needs defining new processes or refining existing ones, which is why a benchmark exercise is extremely valuable at this stage. The report gives an in-depth view, allowing first year reporting entities to reflect on the effectiveness of their process, and provides firsthand insights for second wave reporting entities, in their preparation journey,” stated Oana Ionică, Director, Audit & Assurance, Deloitte Romania.

Out of the 12 strategic topics on which the CSRD requires reporting according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, own workforce (99%) and climate change (98%) were most often assessed as material by reporting entities in all industries. At the opposite end, biodiversity and ecosystems (34%) and affected communities (41%) are considered material by the lowest number of reporting entities analyzed by the Deloitte study.

The European Sustainability Reporting Standards do not impose a sector-specific approach, so each reporting entity should consider specific matters to include in their reports, the study explains. The reports analyzed by Deloitte included entity-specific matters in ten out of the 11 sectors, especially in financial services (64% of the reports) and technology and communications (57%). Cybersecurity is the most commonly met entity-specific matter across the sectors analyzed (financial services, technology and communications, healthcare, transportation, extractives and minerals processing), followed by digitalization.

The Deloitte report “Connecting the dots: ESG and Finance. Auditor’s Perspective on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards Reports in Central Europe” was conducted based on the analysis of ESRS-mandated financial disclosures of 126 large businesses and public interest reporting entities active in Central Europe countries which transposed CSRD into their local regulations by end-2024, namely Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The reporting entities operate in financial services, infrastructure, extractive and minerals processing, food and beverage, services, transportation, resource transformation, technology and communications, healthcare, consumer goods, renewable resources and alternative energy.