CSRD reporting requirements — how are US subsidiaries of EU parents handling this?

by :name Sofia Mendes · ESG & Sustainability · Apr 16, 2026 · 2 replies Answered

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We're a US subsidiary of an EU parent company and the CSRD reporting requirements are now flowing down to us. Specifically we need to provide data for the group-level sustainability report.

The challenge is that a lot of the CSRD reporting requirements assume EU regulatory context — things like works councils, EU taxonomy alignment, ESRS datapoints that reference EU-specific frameworks. Translating these to a US context is confusing.

Is anyone else in this situation? How are you mapping EU CSRD reporting requirements to US operations? We're especially struggling with:

Scope 3 emissions data from our US supply chain
Social metrics (workforce diversity data has different legal constraints in the US vs EU)
Governance disclosures that reference EU board structures we don't have

Sofia Mendes

Member since Apr 2026

-1

Accepted Answer

Exact same boat. Our EU parent started sending us data request templates in September and half the fields didn't make sense in a US context.

What we ended up doing:

Mapped each ESRS datapoint to the closest US equivalent (e.g., EEO-1 data for workforce diversity instead of EU social metrics)
Where there's no US equivalent, we wrote explanation notes rather than leaving blanks
For scope 3, we're using spend-based estimates for now and building toward actual supplier data over the next 2 years

The CSRD reporting requirements are definitely designed with EU companies in mind but the double materiality principle still applies globally. Our group sustainability team accepted that year-one US data would be less granular and we'd improve iteratively.

Re: governance — we explained our US board structure in narrative form rather than trying to force it into the EU template. The auditors were fine with it.

Maya Johansson

Member since Apr 2026

2 replies

This is a really common challenge. A few additional things to be aware of:

Legal risks with workforce data — Be careful about collecting and sharing US employee diversity data with your EU parent. Some US states have restrictions on how this data can be used, and you need to ensure GDPR-compliant transfer mechanisms are in place for any personal data flowing to the EU.

CSRD scope 3 reporting — This is where most companies are struggling regardless of jurisdiction. The GHG Protocol's scope 3 categories don't perfectly align with the ESRS E1 requirements. Our suggestion: start with the categories that are material per your double materiality assessment and be transparent about methodology limitations.

Timeline — The EU CSRD reporting requirements phase in based on company size. Make sure you know which wave your parent falls into — this determines your actual deadline.

LexFlag Team

Apr 19, 2026 at 1:47 AM