Europe's green sprint also requires efforts from SMEs. Although they are not required to report on their social and environmental investments, large corporate clients and investors are more often making that demand. ‘Fortunately, protection is coming.’
Although SMEs are not obliged to do so, at 3Motion from Zele, they have decided to share a sustainability report with customers from the new year. ‘Many of our corporate customers are already asking for that,’ says Femke Helon, the CEO of the specialist in visual communications such as shop fitting, facade advertising, displays and packaging. 'They have to report on that themselves and need information from us. Some clients ask us to fill in an Excel file, others want us to deliver a full presentation. Going through that paper mill every time, that takes up a lot of time. By coming up with our own report, we hope to counter that.'
The essence
- SMEs are increasingly required to communicate their sustainability efforts in line with large, listed companies.
- Customers and investors want to know how future-proof companies are.
- Unizo obtained more protection for SMEs when European rules on sustainability reporting were transposed into Belgian law.
- An SME like 3Motion from Zele countered the demand by reporting on its sustainability performance itself.
3Motion is not the only SME to be pulled along by the green sprint Europe wants to make with its Green Deal. To become climate neutral by 2050, Europe wants companies to invest in sustainability. It requires large, listed companies to report on this regularly in an ESG (environmental, social and governance) report. Besides the social and environmental risks for the company, this includes the impact of activities on people and the environment.
Next year, this will take the next step. Thus, from the 2025 financial year, unlisted large companies will also have to track their ESG efforts in order to report on them in 2026. SMEs feel the pressure to both track and invest, otherwise they risk being excluded by banks, shareholders and large customers. But a significant proportion of companies cannot handle the ESG transition on their own, an analysis by data specialist GraydonCreditSafe showed on Tuesday. The distress is highest among SMEs, 21.8 per cent of which are insufficiently profitable and/or lack financial reserves.
CO₂ scan
‘We get more and more questions about it from our SME members,’ says Julie Leroy, tax adviser at the self-employed organisation Unizo. 'As customers or suppliers, they receive all kinds of questionnaires from large companies. Some SMEs are already further along in the green story, but for many it's still a bit of a search. Passing on their electricity consumption is still possible. But their total CO₂ emissions, many companies do not have them readily at hand.
3Motion in the spotlightoverzicht
