Europaudvalget 2024-25
KOM (2025) 0503
Offentligt
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28. oktober 2024
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Accelerating European competitiveness by building the data and reporting
landscape of the future
Sag
With rising geopolitical tension and increasing global strategic competition,
there is no task more important for the EU than increasing our competitiveness.
To increase our competitiveness at this pivotal moment, the EU must look to-
wards the future and utilizing the tools of digitalization for burden reduction and
create the data sharing landscape of the future for our companies.
For years, the EU Single Market has championed the development of our Union
for the great of prosperity and growth. Despite this success, the EU has for far
too long not managed to create a common digital single marked for sharing com-
pany data and reporting requirements that seamlessly flow across borders. In-
stead, EU-legislation has created 27 different reporting and data sharing land-
scapes, placing huge unnecessary costs and inefficiencies on companies.
Concretely, this means that a German company must report data in one way and
format when dealing with a Danish company, and in another way and format
when dealing with a French company. The challenges of sustainability reporting
exemplify this challenge of sharing data across our union.
The future is digital: pixels before papers
There is no doubt that the future is digital. We must dare to create a future where
the burdens of unnecessary paperwork no longer hinder innovation and growth.
Where digital solutions automatically manage data sharing and reporting. Where
businesses use their resources on their competitiveness instead of compliance.
This future is achievable. And it should be built in Europe, paving the way for
further success for our Single Market in a new digital age. We must actively
promote a simple exchange of business data for companies with the aim of cre-
ating a single common data sharing and reporting framework in the EU.
Reaping the benefits of digitization
is key. Let’s build the reporting and data
sharing landscape of the future.
Next steps
–
how to realise seamless data sharing for companies
Some of the largest administrative burdens stemming from reporting require-
ments comes from the gathering, handling, and sharing of data due to manual,
analogue and fragmented data formats, IT systems and lack of access to relevant
data sources across public and private entities.
To automate and digitalise the businesses reporting landscape in Europe we see
a need to focus on digital infrastructures for business reporting requirements in
general and sustainability reporting requirements in particular. Thus, we need:
A
‘Digital
First’ approach
in which EU legislation and reporting require-
ments is ready for digitalisation from the start. This means that new and existing
legislation should be reviewed in terms of how it can be implemented and
ERHVERVSSTY RELSEN
Dahlerups Pakhus
Langelinie Allé 17
2100 København Ø
Tlf.
35 29 10 00
CVR-nr 10 15 08 17
E-post [email protected]
www.erst.dk
ERHVERVSMINISTERIET
 kom (2025) 0503 - Endeligt svar på spørgsmål 1: Spm. om non-papers eller positionspapirer vedr. sagerne om forenklingspakke IV
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administered digitally, such as what are the data that companies need to report
and how can they do it digitally.
And in particular for sustainability reporting and product disclosure
we
need
digital product passports by default
as the default tool across EU regula-
tion in order to facilitate efficient sharing of sustainability data following pro-
curement and sales of products.
To develop lacking ESG methodologies
for data points in the European
sustainability reporting standards (ESRS) that are still lacking (e.g., biodiver-
sity) to ensure, that they are “fit
for digitalization”
and thereby strengthening
the data quality and comparability of ESG data needed for sustainability report-
ing.
To establish an EU CO
2
-e emission factor data bank
giving companies
free and easy access to trustworthy and comparable emission factors reducing
burdens from calculating CO
2
-e emissions for their sustainability reporting.
Harmonised standards and structured digital data formats
in order to
streamline compliance and reporting across borders, meaning that when intro-
ducing regulation and requirements the EU should define the common standards
for reporting.
And in particular for sustainability reporting
there is a lack of quality data
formats for sustainability data leading to low quality data being shared across
fragmented systems. There is a need to
identify, structure
and
standardise sus-
tainability data in digital formats
that are interoperable and integrated in
ESG
systems
and are
well governed
–
such as a digital voluntary SME standard for
ESG data sharing.
Minimum requirements
for digital business systems that promotes auto-
mation of business data within the company across a multitude of different IT-
systems by setting minimum requirements for interoperability, portability and
integration of data standards etc. Inspiration could be drawn from the existing
Ecodesign regulation requirements for the digital product passport and the Dan-
ish Book-keeping Act.
And in particular for sustainability reporting,
we need
minimum re-
quirements for ESG systems
in order to make them transparent about methods
and data sources while avoiding vendor lock-in by using open data standards and
have interoperable and portable solutions.
A common European infrastructure for business data
by use of exist-
ing European building blocks and standards for data formats, transport proto-
cols, and APIs (e.g., the CEF eDelivery). It creates a common infrastructure
that enables companies to share data uniformly and without vendor lock-in, en-
suring openness and safety for all participants.
And in particular for sustainability reporting,
facilitate the sharing of
ESG data in an open interoperable cross-border data infrastructure
by uti-
lising the same building blocks, standards, principles and protocols for ESG data.