Romania is in a hurry to implement the ESG Directive, as the obligations will apply more quickly to companies with 50 employees, not just 500, as was the case until now, said Camelia Stoian, Sales & Account Manager, Credit Risk Services, ICAP CRIF.

“We are, here in Romania, as they say, more a Catholic than the Pope himself,” she said, at the conference “Digitalization and energy efficiency – Brașov 2024” organised by Energynomics and the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Romania.

The directive came out last year and has already been transposed into national law. But on 23 August 2024, it was amended. According to the new thresholds set in the directive, all companies that fulfil two out of three conditions will be obliged to draw up their sustainability reports by the 2026 fiscal year. To achieve this, every employee in the company will have to collect large data sets and work for weeks or even months to interpret them.

“It’s very complicated, because practically all employees in a company will have to contribute to the collection of this data needed for the report. The most difficult part is related to the environment, resource consumption, CO2 emissions. Big companies have already started to hire dedicated specialists or set up special departments,” said Stoian.

The conference “Digitalization and energy efficiency – Brașov 2024” was organised by Energynomics and the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Romania, with the support of our partners: Bepco, Exim Banca Românească,  ICAP CRIF, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, Polytrade Global, SolarX Power, Unicredit Bank, WALDEVAR Energy, WEBUS 4 ENERGY.