Last week, on November 25th, 2021, the EU Commission adopted a comprehensive package of measures with the aim of improving the transparency of company and commercial data. Part of this package of measures are the draft guidelines for the European Single Access Point (ESAP), which are now available. Among other things, a central access option to the mandatory ESEF annual financial reports of all capital market-oriented companies in the EU is to be created. In addition, the new portal is also intended for the central future publication of sustainability data (ESG data).

This EU portal supports the new strategy of providing data in a structured, machine-readable form and linking this to a visual representation of the data (xHTML, inlineXBRL).

ESAP is scheduled to go live in 2024 under the responsibility of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Sources:

• EU Commission, communication, November 25, 2021
• EU Commission, proposal for a regulation (2021/0378 (COD))  “establishing a European single Access point providing centralised access to publicly available information of relevance for financial services, capital markets und sustainability”, 25.11.2021