Recital 20

(20) Third-country undertakings which have a significant activity on the territory of the Union should also be required to provide sustainability information, especially on their impacts on social and environmental matters, in order to ensure that third-country undertakings are accountable for their impacts on people and the environment and that there is a level playing field for companies operating in the internal market. Therefore, third-country undertakings which generate a net turnover of more than EUR 150 million in the Union and which have a subsidiary undertaking or a branch on the territory of the Union should be subject to Union sustainability reporting requirements. To ensure the proportionality and enforceability of such requirements, the threshold of having a net turnover of more than EUR 40 million should apply to the branches of third-country undertakings, and the thresholds related to being considered a large undertaking or a small or medium-sized undertaking, except micro undertakings, whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market in the Union should apply to the subsidiary undertakings of third-country undertakings, as such subsidiary undertakings and branches should be responsible for publishing the sustainability report of the third-country undertaking. The sustainability reports published by the subsidiary undertaking or branch of a third-country undertaking should be prepared in accordance with standards to be adopted by 30 June 2024 by the Commission through delegated acts. The subsidiary undertaking or branch of a third-country undertaking should also be able to report in accordance with the standards applying to undertakings established in the Union, or in accordance with standards which are deemed equivalent pursuant to an implementing act. In the event that not all the information required under this amending Directive is provided by the third-country undertaking, despite the best efforts of the subsidiary undertaking or branch of that third-country undertaking to obtain the necessary information, that subsidiary undertaking or branch should provide all the information in its possession and issue a statement indicating that the third-country undertaking did not make the rest of the required information available. In order to ensure the quality and reliability of the reporting, the sustainability reports of third-country undertakings should be published accompanied by an assurance opinion expressed by a person or firm authorised to give an opinion on the assurance of sustainability reporting, either under the national law of the third-country undertaking or of a Member State. In the event that such an assurance opinion is not provided, the subsidiary undertaking or branch of the third-country undertaking should issue a statement indicating that the third-country undertaking did not provide the necessary assurance opinion. The sustainability report should be made accessible free of charge to the public through the central, commercial or companies registers of the Member States, or alternatively on the website of the subsidiary undertaking or the branch of the third-country undertaking. Member States should be able to inform the Commission on an annual basis of the subsidiary undertakings or branches of the third-country undertakings that fulfilled the publication requirement and of the cases where a report was published but the subsidiary undertaking or branch of the third-country undertaking has stated that it could not get the necessary information from the third-country undertaking. The Commission should make publicly available on its website a list of the third-country undertakings that have published a sustainability report.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-08-27 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.