On 9 April 2025, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a Final Report on a Common Supervisory Action (CSA) on ESG disclosures under the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR).

The CSA was launched in December 2023 and sought to assess how benchmark administrators supervised in the EU comply with the BMR’s ESG disclosure requirements, as well as identifying good practices and clarifying expectations to enhance the availability and comparability of the ESG information for users of benchmarks.

Findings

Among other things the Final Report notes that the CSA found that the lack of specific guidance on the definition and calculation of ESG factors has resulted in divergent and inconsistent calculation and disclosure practices across administrators as well as benchmarks. In addition, the CSA flagged inconsistent approaches in the underlying assumptions that administrators use for the determination of the factors.

As such the Final Report provides clarifications of transparency expectations for administrators as well as guidance on the definitions and methodology used for the calculation of the ESG factors, including good practices identified. It also makes certain recommendations to the European Commission for potential amendments to Level 2 measures, including on streamlining ESG disclosure requirements.

Next steps

ESMA will continue liaising and cooperating with Member State competent authorities on this topic and related follow-up actions.

ESMA, together with the NCAs, will assess whether there is a need to use other supervisory convergence tools to build a stronger supervisory culture across the EU and promote effective, sound and consistent supervision with regard to ESG disclosure.