The Director General of the Spanish Association for Standardization, UNE, and Vice-President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Javier García, participated in ESG SUMMIT EUROPE 2024, the leading event in Europe for excellence in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) criteria. This international summit gathered together companies, investors, regulators, rating agencies, data providers, consultancies and other key players in the field of sustainability at the Teatro Albéniz in Madrid.
Javier García took part in the panel “Harmonizing sustainability standards", moderated by Ángel Álvarez from the consultancy LLYC; and featured Gemma Sánchez-Danes, from EFRAG, and Jonathan Bravo, from the IFRS Foundation. The latter two entities are responsible for developing sustainability reporting rules in Europe and globally, respectively.
At the event, Javier García explained how Spanish UNE standards, European EN standards, and international ISO and IEC standards help organizations advance their ESG objectives while improving the robustness and reliability of their reporting data. They provide guidelines and recommendations to shift towards net-zero emissions, circular economy, gender equality, governance management and compliance.
UNE has drawn up the report ‘Apoyo de las normas para el reporte ESG’ (Supporting standards for ESG reporting) with the aim of helping Spanish organizations to comply with the sustainability reporting obligations of the Corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) with regard to environmental, social and governance aspects, as well as the entities that must verify this information. This publication, free to download, compiles representative standards in the field of ESG and links these standards with the corresponding NEIS (ESRS).
Various actions are being implemented in standardization to reinforce the support standards provide to sustainability reporting frameworks. . One of them is the collaboration that has been established between EFRAG and CEN-CENELEC and between IFRS and ISO, which facilitates the recognition of standards as tools for organizations to make progress on ESG matters.
In addition, ISO is developing the IWA 48 global standard “Framework for the implementation of ESG principles", which will help organizations of all sizes to create an ESG framework to integrate these principles into their business and corporate culture.
