What is going on?
If you received a sustainability questionnaire from a large customer in recent years, it usually stemmed from European reporting obligations such as the CSRD, with the VSME standard as a simplified variant for smaller companies in the supply chain. At present, the European Commission is working on a package to simplify those rules, often referred to in practice as the simplification package or Omnibus proposal. The aim is to reduce administrative burden, especially for smaller and medium-sized enterprises.
What that will concretely mean for the questionnaire your customer sends you is not yet settled. Negotiations between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Member States are still ongoing, and the final text may still change. What can be said is: the direction is fewer rather than more questions, and greater emphasis on what a customer really needs to support their own reporting.
Why the European Commission wants to simplify the rules
The CSRD requires a growing group of large companies to report on their sustainability impact, including the impact in their supply chain. Those large companies often translate that obligation into questionnaires to their suppliers, regardless of whether those suppliers themselves fall under the CSRD. Signals from the business community showed that this led to an accumulation of questionnaires for smaller suppliers, often with overlapping or very detailed questions.
The VSME standard was already intended as a response to that: a more compact format, specifically designed for companies that are not themselves subject to reporting obligations but are asked to provide information. The current revision goes a step further and looks at the scope of the CSRD itself, at which companies do and do not fall under it, and at how much a large company is actually allowed or required to ask its suppliers. For more on what can actually be included in such a questionnaire and why, see the knowledge base with explanations by subject.
What is already established and what is not
It is established that discussion on simplification is underway and that the European Commission has submitted a proposal in this. What is not established is which companies will and will not fall under the reporting obligation, what the exact timelines will be, and whether existing questionnaires will be adapted in the short term. Large customers often work with long-running internal processes; a change in European rules does not automatically or immediately translate into a shorter questionnaire in your inbox.
It is therefore not advisable to wait now with putting your answers in order, on the assumption that the questionnaire will disappear or become shorter of its own accord. For the current status of the negotiations and the official text, we refer you to EUR-Lex and, for the consequences for your own company, to a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority.
What this means for your customer's questionnaire
As long as the revision is not complete, existing practice largely continues: your customer asks what he thinks he needs, and you decide yourself what you share and what you do not. A simplification of European rules can in the longer term lead to shorter or more standardized questionnaires, but as long as that is not settled, each portal will continue to use its own format. If you are uncertain whether a specific question fits your company size, that is something to discuss with your customer or an adviser, not something we make a judgment about.
A good starting point to see which subjects are relevant for your situation is the recognition check which in a few questions shows approximately where you stand. That is not an assessment of your company, but an indication based on the questions you answer.
What you can do now
Regardless of how the review turns out, it remains useful to keep the answers you have already provided in one central place, so you don't have to look them up every time again. This saves time with every new questionnaire, whether it becomes shorter or not. How such a central file works and where the information comes from, you can read on the page that explains how the system works.
If you have a specific question about a questionnaire that you already have on your desk, you will find answers to frequently asked questions in the overview of frequently asked questions. If you first want to see whether this topic is relevant for your company, you can do the free quick-scan without obligation or go through the other topics in the knowledge base.