Digital tagging with XBRL taxonomies

According to Article 29d of the Accounting Directive, as amended by the CSRD, provides that ‘undertakings [...] shall prepare their management report in the electronic reporting format […] and shall mark up their sustainability reporting, in accordance with the electronic reporting format.’

EFRAG has been requested by the European Commission (EC) to develop the digital XBRL taxonomies needed to digitise the sustainability statements in an electronic format. This covers the following sustainability disclosure requirements:

• ESRS Set 1 according to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772
• Article 8 “EU Taxonomy” disclosures according to Regulation (EU) 2020/852 including its amendments.

The XBRL taxonomies are the basis for the European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) to develop Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) for tagging the sustainability statements. The final RTS will be adopted by the EC by way of a Delegated Act (DA), through the amendment of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815 on the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF).

Digital tagging will not be mandatory for companies until the EC adopts the XBRL taxonomy as part of the ESEF RTS that will be prepared by ESMA.

XBRL taxonomies enable the digital tagging of ESRS statements by providing XBRL elements (or ‘tags’) for every datapoint and dimensional disaggregation defined in disclosure requirements. The XBRL taxonomies developed by EFRAG are compliant to the XBRL specifications and can be processed with any XBRL software implementing those. A list of certified XBRL software tools that are compliant with the specifications is available here: https://software.xbrl.org/

The development of the ESRS Set 1 XBRL Taxonomy followed EFRAG’s due process, including public consultations and final approval from SR TEG and SRB, supported and advised by EFRAGs Digital Consultative Forum (DRCF).

In case of questions related to the digital XBRL taxonomies, EFRAG’s digital team can be reached by email at Digital-Reporting@EFRAG.ORG .

The XBRL taxonomies and their corresponding supporting materials (documents, entry points, meetings, news items) are available on each project webpage below.