The EU’s voluntary sustainability reporting standard VSME (Voluntary Standard for non-listed Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) has been developed for SMEs that are not covered by the CSRD directive but are increasingly facing requests for sustainability information from customers, financiers, and partners.
On paper, the objective is sensible:
– to harmonize sustainability information
– to facilitate responses to ESG information requests
– to improve SMEs’ access to financing
In practice, however, VSME is a reporting framework, not a model for sustainability work. In drafting the standard, the primary points of departure have been the needs of financiers and other stakeholders, rather than those of SMEs. It does not tell companies what they should do, but rather what they should, in the view of the standard’s authors, be able to report.
This distinction is essential for SMEs.
Sustainability work in SMEs is built in everyday operations: energy use, procurement, personnel matters, customer work, and management. VSME provides little guidance for these choices; instead, it compiles them retrospectively into reportable data points.
Also read: Why does sustainability reporting alone not change anything in SMEs?
For this reason, VSME works best as a supporting tool, not as a starting point for sustainability work. This is why VSME alone does not yet create value; what is decisive is how it is used.
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