what is VSME and what does it have to do with me

A voluntary standard, made for SMEs

VSME stands for Voluntary SME standard: a standard by EFRAG that sets out what sustainability information a non-listed SME can reasonably provide, and in what form. The word "voluntary" is in the name because an SME does not itself fall under the reporting obligation of the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) — that obligation applies to larger, often listed companies. Yet that standard does have something to do with an SME, albeit in an indirect way: large companies that must report themselves need information from their suppliers to do so, and that request then reaches the SME as a questionnaire.

VSME functions as a kind of ceiling in this respect. The basic module of the standard describes a defined set of data — think of energy consumption, personnel data and simple emissions figures, where emissions are categorized according to scopes 1, 2 and 3 from the GHG Protocol. Since the chain provision of March 2026 in the corporate sustainability reporting directive, that ceiling is no longer merely guidance but a boundary: a large buyer, bank or insurer may not ask a supplier with a thousand employees or fewer for more than what is in that basic module. What may be asked, and how you as an entrepreneur can check this for a specific questionnaire, is set out in can my client ask all the sustainability questions he wants.

Where this follows from the directive and the standard

That an SME is not itself subject to reporting obligations follows from the scope of Directive (EU) 2022/2464; that there is a limit to what a company subject to reporting obligations may ask its suppliers follows from the chain provision included in that directive in March 2026. The content of that limit — which data may and may not be requested — is laid down in the basic module of EFRAG's VSME standard, with the GHG Protocol as the underlying framework for the emissions categorization. How that basic module looks in practice when a specific questionnaire is assessed can be seen in what exactly is esgia's capcheck.