INTEGRATED REPORTING IN EUROPE – FROM VOLUNTARY TO MANDATORY?

Abstract

Nowadays, the regulators set out new rules for the financial and non-financial reporting because of the pressure of the stakeholders. On the other hand, a lot of information is published voluntary as a policy of the companies. Applied on a mandatory or a voluntary basis, integrated reporting provides at least two advantages: correlation financial - non-financial information (for stakeholders) and reputation (for companies). In the last years, European regulators try to emphasize the importance of non-financial information (especially the environmental and social aspects) for an appropriate understanding of the company’s development, performance or position. In this context, European Parliament and the Council have adopted new rules for companies concerning the information they must publish. Within the current paper, we provide a description of the new European rules on companies reporting, an overview of the most recent literature related to integrated reporting and a longitudinal analysis of the European companies that registered their annual reports in the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database.

Keywords

• integrated reporting;
• financial and nonfinancial indicators;
• csr regulation;