You can now use the declaration of conformity for your own corporate communications. Following the formal review by the Code Office, the Code signet can be included on your website, in brochures and in emails, among other things. You can issue a press release or inform your customers and/or commissioning partners and suppliers of the declaration of conformity personally. You can also export the Code declaration to other file formats, to serve as the basis for an integrated report, a sustainability report, a separate non-financial declaration or other means of communication.
We additionally encourage you to also submit your declaration in English. This is of interest in particular to companies with international business partners and also to make yourself visible at the European level in line with the EU’s obligation to report non-financial information. In so doing, you will be supporting the Council’s endeavours to position the Sustainability Code as a minimum standard in Europe. Simply upload your translated declaration to the database for the same reporting year and we will publish it as soon as we have performed a few spot checks.
For those users who wish to follow up their CSR reporting according to the Code framework with a rating, we would point out the joint
Sustainability Code and EcoVadis guide. There is a lot of overlap in terms of the CSR topics covered between the Code as a transparency standard and an EcoVadis rating. This means there is little additional work involved for the users should a company wish to transition from reporting to active supply chain management or vice versa.