EFRAG Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for non-listed SMEs (VSME)

The VSME is designed for undertakings that are not in the mandatory scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (‘CSRD’). EFRAG's work on the VSME is based on the European Commission’s SME Relief Package of September 2023 which refers to this specific standard as a measure to support SMEs in accessing sustainable finance (“EFRAG will develop a voluntary standard for non-listed SMEs. SMEs can use this to standardise the sustainability information they wish to report, creating better opportunities to obtain green financing and thus facilitating the transition to a sustainable economy”).

Based on market acceptance, the VSME has been designed to provide a standardised set of information to replace the current multiple and uncoordinated questionnaires and ESG data requests.

The VSME is structured under a Basic Module and a Comprehensive Module. These two modules are expected to fulfil a substantial part of requests from business partners (i.e., banks, investors and large corporates) that SMEs currently receive. The VSME includes disclosures for undertakings across sectors; a few additional data requests cannot be excluded to reflect the specificities of some sectors.