Glossary

Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

Also known as: CSRD, ESRS

An EU directive requiring large companies and, on a phased basis, non-EU companies with substantial EU operations to publish detailed, externally audited sustainability disclosures under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), substantially expanding mandatory ESG reporting scope and rigor beyond prior voluntary frameworks.

CSRD represents a step-change from largely voluntary ESG disclosure frameworks like TCFD or GRESB toward mandatory, audited reporting comparable in rigor to financial statement disclosure, requiring covered companies to report using standardized European Sustainability Reporting Standards that include real estate-relevant metrics on energy performance, climate risk, and biodiversity impact across owned and managed property portfolios. The directive's scope extends beyond EU-headquartered companies to capture non-EU parent companies with sufficiently large EU subsidiary revenue or operations, meaning U.S. real estate investment managers and REITs with meaningful European holdings or EU-domiciled funds may fall within CSRD's reporting requirements even without an EU corporate headquarters. Because CSRD-mandated disclosures are subject to third-party assurance requirements that phase in over time, compliance has driven significant investment in data collection systems and internal controls for portfolio-level energy, emissions, and climate risk data — infrastructure that increasingly overlaps with, and is often built to simultaneously satisfy, GRESB reporting and EU Taxonomy alignment assessments.