The National Council of Chartered Accountants and Accounting Experts has published the Sustainability Reporting information n.19entitled “Sustainability reporting for Italian SMEs: evidence, challenges and perspectives in the VSME model”.
The document was created within the area of delegation of councilor Gian Luca Galletti and the “Sustainability Reporting” commission of which Angeloantonio Russo is president. This issue was edited by the VSME working group, whose scientific coordination is entrusted to Emanuele Saggese.
The regulatory framework
During 2025, following thedefinitive adoption ofVSME by the European Commission and the publication of the related Digital Template (version 1.1.0), the operational context has undergone a phase of significant consolidation. Companies were able to access clearer technical tools for the collection and representation of environmental, social and governance data (ESG – environmental, social, governance), encouraging the first voluntary applications of the model, also in line with phase 2 of national transposition envisaged by Legislative Decree no. 125/2024.
The content of the document
The document is located in in-depth path promoted by the National Council on the subject of sustainability reporting for SMEswith particular reference to the VSME (Voluntary Standard for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) model developed by EFRAG.
The working group conducted a application reconnaissance on sustainability reports published by companies that have adopted, in full or in a coherent form, the VSME model, with the aim of identifying operational evidence, common trends and emerging critical issues, also evaluating the level of quality and methodological coherence of the information reported.
The analyzed sample includes forty sustainability reportsreferring to companies belonging to different sectors and characterized by different levels of ESG maturity – environmental, social and governance. This allowed us to observe both cases attributable to Basic Module (A) and more advanced cases that present elements of the Modulo Comprehensive (B), highlighting strengths and areas where practice has deviated from the model’s predictions.
The analysis was conducted through a systematic and comparative reading of sustainability reports published by companies that have declared or demonstrated consistency with the VSME model. For each document, information relating to the main ESG areas was collected with particular attention to the quality of the data, the traceability of the sources, the completeness of the information and the methodological coherence.
The work was done with uniform criteria by the members of the working group in order to guarantee homogeneity of evaluation and comparability.
The document provides an overall reading of the first applications of VSME in Italy, highlighting the elements of greatest interest, the overall coherence of the reports analyzed and the evolutionary prospects of sustainability reporting for SMEs.
The purposes
The working group set itself a cognitive and analytical objective that is, understanding how SMEs are interpreting sustainability in a proportionate way, capturing the balance between essential information requirements and organizational change dynamics. In this context, the role of the accounting profession also takes on importance, called upon to accompany companies towards more informed, structured and useful reporting for decision-making processes.
