NSRS Board announces name change to support a common voluntary standard in Europe.
The NSRS board has decided to change its name to Nordic Sustainability Reporting for SMEs. This change replaces “standard” with “SMEs” to align with the European Commission’s goal of a unified voluntary reporting standard across Europe.
– By removing ‘standard’ from the name, we show our support for the European Commission’s goal of a common European standard for voluntary reporting, says Hans Christian Ellefsen, Chairman of NSRS.
The name change is a declaration of support for EFRAG’s voluntary reporting standard, the Voluntary Standard for Non-Listed Micro-, Small-, and Medium-Sized Undertakings (VSME). NSRS will continue to offer tools and guidance based on the VSME standard.
Continued guidance
NSRS supports the aim of uniting the market around a common standard for small and medium-sized enterprises. The VSME standard is expected to be endorsed as a recommendation by the European Commission in June 2025.
– Our tool will be based on the VSME standard, but we will keep some Nordic voluntary reporting points in line with information that we think is valuable to users, stakeholders and those reporting. The tool and guidance will continue to be free of charge, and an instruction adapted to the different Nordic countries will be added, says Sara Wilsgaard, sustainability matter expert at Regnskap Norge.
NSRS shared with EFRAG
NSRS was originally developed as a standard and a tool adapted for small and medium-sized companies and their accounting consultants. The standard emerged due to the lack of a sustainability reporting standard tailored to small and medium-sized enterprises. The project initially received support from Nordic Innovation.
NSRS has previously shared its standard directly with the European Commission and EFRAG as part of EFRAG’s development of a voluntary standard for small and medium-sized enterprises.
– When the European Commission and EFRAG began working on a standard for small and medium-sized enterprises, we shared our standard and Excel tool directly with them. We are proud to see clear traces of NSRS in EFRAG’s voluntary standard, VSME, says Ellefsen.
About VSME and NSRS
The European Commission’s main ambition is for the VSME standard to become the basis for lenders, investors, and business partners in the value chain when defining their ESG data requests for SMEs. This means that VSME can help narrow down the many requests by replacing various uncoordinated questionnaires with VSME, significantly reducing the reporting burden for SMEs.
The NSRS tool, now known as Nordic Sustainability Reporting for SMEs, was originally a project by the Nordic Accountant Federation funded by Nordic Innovation. With EFRAG’s development of the VSME standard, NSRS is transitioning from being a standard to a continuously updated tool and guidance. This update shows NSRS’s support for the idea of one common European standard while still playing an important role in the Nordic market by offering free tools and guidance.
