Directive 2014/95/EU: Are Italian Companies Already Compliant?

Andrea Venturelli, Fabio Caputo, Simona Cosma, Rossella Leopizzi and Simone Pizzi
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Andrea Venturelli: Department of Economic Sciences, University of the Salento, Lecce 73100, Italy
Fabio Caputo: Department of Economic Sciences, University of the Salento, Lecce 73100, Italy
Simona Cosma: Department of Economic Sciences, University of the Salento, Lecce 73100, Italy
Rossella Leopizzi: Department of Economic Sciences, University of the Salento, Lecce 73100, Italy
Simone Pizzi: Department of Economic Sciences, University of the Salento, Lecce 73100, Italy

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: According to Directive 2014/95/EU on disclosure of non-financial information from 2017 onwards, large companies (exceeding 500 employees) headquartered in Member States will be required to provide a series of social, environmental, and governance statements. The Directive was transposed into Italian law by Legislative Decree 254 of 30 December 2016.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the information gap for Italian companies and,consequently,the adjustments required by the new Directive on non-financial information. In order to analyze the level of non-financial and diversity disclosure, we created an assessment model called “Non-financial information score”, which records the required information as a percentage. We apply it to a sample of 223 large companies.The results (with an average NFIscore of about 49%) show that, in spite of what has previously emerged in the European debate about the application of the Directive on the part of large companies, an information gap remains, although the implementation of the directive should help to fill it in the coming years.In this sense, the potential contribution of the EU directive to non-financial disclosure in Italy appears to be greater than we had expected. Thus, in accordance with the literature, this paper appears to confirm the role of regulation in improving the quality of disclosure of non-financial information.

Keywords: non-financial information; diversity information; EU non-financial reporting directive; Legislative Decree 254/2016; CSR reporting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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