Adapting to ESG Trends: Sustainability Reporting and Assurance Practices in Romania

Iulia-Diana Costea and Camelia-Daniela Hategan
Additional contact information
Iulia-Diana Costea: West University of Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania
Camelia-Daniela Hategan: West University of Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania

Journal of Financial Studies, 2025, vol. 10, issue 18, 73-90

Abstract: In today’s challenging world, companies need to increasingly develop their ability to adapt to new challenges, while also maintaining their motivation to communicate with a broader audience, such as different stakeholders. This paper’s goals are to highlight the key elements of a sustainability report published by the companies and to outline the procedures undertaken by the auditors in their sustainability assurance engagements. Thus, this study seeks to underline the importance of reporting on sustainability matters and to illustrate how companies from Romania have adapted their reporting package to the current trend. To illustrate how companies address the relevant subject matters related to their activities, an analysis has been conducted on the sustainability reports, as well as the limited assurance reports provided by an independent third party. The selected companies are OMV Petrom S.A., Kaufland Romania S.C., Transilvania Bank S.A. and Coca-Cola HBC Romania S.R.L. As can be seen, the fields of activity are different, revealing which topics and subtopics from the European Sustainability Reporting Standards are material and relevant for each company. The results of this research paper show that for the upcoming years, a gradual transition from limited assurance to reasonable assurance can be identified throughout the literature review. The conclusion of this research paper aims to highlight the positive impact that a company creates in the business environment at the moment when it publishes a sustainability report. Nevertheless, the key elements of this study consist of useful information on material subject matters for four different fields of activity in Romania, as well as the steps that an assurance practitioner has to follow during the engagement.

Keywords: sustainability assurance; limited assurance; ESG (environmental; social; governance); sustainability report. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M41 M42 Q01 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://revista.isfin.ro/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/4.-Costea-Diana-et..pdf (application/pdf)
https://revista.isfin.ro/2025/01/09/adapting-to-es ... ractices-in-romania/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fst:rfsisf:v:10:y:2025:i:18:p:73-90

DOI: 10.55654/JFS.2025.10.18.04

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Studies is currently edited by Raluca Ladaru

More articles in Journal of Financial Studies from Institute of Financial Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cosmin Catalin Olteanu ().