Europe’s ESRS simplification is now a legal design problem, not just a reporting relief story

The European Commission opened a one-month feedback process on revised ESRS, with comments due 3 June 2026. The draft cuts mandatory datapoints by more than 60%, total datapoints by more than 70%, and introduces a value-chain cap that prevents CSRD in-scope companies from requiring partners with 1,000 employees or fewer to provide more than the voluntary standard requires. For legal teams, the work now is to redesign reporting controls, value-chain requests and contractual data asks without over-collecting information that the revised regime is trying to suppress.