Preparing upcoming sustainability statements: the AMF draws listed companies’ attention to ESMA’s 2026 recommendations

Each year, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) sets European common enforcement priorities for corporate reporting. These recommendations are addressed to listed companies for the preparation of their annual financial report. The AMF draws companies’ attention to the 2026 priorities relating to sustainability statements.

On 13 October 2026, ESMA published the new European Common Enforcement Priorities (or ECEP) related to corporate reporting. These annual recommendations cover the different aspects of the annual financial report (financial reporting,sustainability reporting and the digital reporting format). The AMF sets out below the specific recommendations on the preparation of the upcoming 2026 sustainability statements, the third year of application of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

In its communication, ESMA recalls the particular context of 2026, a transitional year as regards the reporting standards to be used to prepare sustainability statements.

On 3 July 2026, the European Commission adopted the new revised and simplified version of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (or ESRS). These new standards were published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 21 September 2026.

For their 2026 reporting, companies may choose between several options: (1) apply “Set 2”, i.e. the revised and simplified ESRS; (2) apply “Set 1”, i.e. the current version of the ESRS, which already includes certain simplifications introduced by the July 2025 “quick-fix”; or (3) apply Set 1 together with certain reliefs that are specifically listed in Article 2(1)(b) of the Delegated Regulation of 3 July. ESMA calls on companies to be transparent about the version of the ESRS used for this transitional financial year.

Two European priorities for sustainability statements