Russian and international practice of regulating mandatory non-financial reporting

The article is devoted to the consideration of regulatory issues regarding the publication of non-financial reports by Russian companies. The number of published non-financial reports is growing, as well as the demand from users to improve their quality and usefulness. Despite the fact that the practice of publishing non-financial reports is not something completely new for Russian organizations, the level of development of the regulatory framework in our country is not optimal in the context of this issue and does not meet the needs of businesses and their stakeholders. At the same time, supranational regulatory bodies of the European Union are already sufficiently engaged in this issue. The publication of Directive 2022/2464 of the European Parliament and of the Council marked a turning point for organizations of the entire union in terms of the practice of disclosing non-financial information. The article considers how Russian legislation regulates the practice of mandatory disclosure of non-financial information by organizations, how widespread is the voluntary publication of such reports in our country, the problems of the current state of the issue, as well as the restrictions faced by businesses and users of reports in connection with the imposed international sanctions. The article analyzes international experience based on the example of the EU member states in the context of several iterations of the development of European legislation. As a result of the analysis of regulatory documents, scientific publications and statistical information, the author developed a periodization of the development and elaboration of supranational legislation of the European Union in terms of mandatory disclosure of non-financial information and highlighted the key aspects and qualitative differences of each stage. The conclusions include the algorithm for development of uniform non-financial reporting standards and proposed directions for related regulatory framework, as well as arguments in favor of the necessity for an appropriate system of incentives and sanctions regulating, among other things, the consequences of violations of the new requirements.