New ESRS list of requirements lands, with the taxonomy close behind
The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) Secretariat published its 2026 Draft List of Datapoints for the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) on 28 August, opening a consultation that runs until 23 October 2026.
The list brings together every datapoint defined in the revised standards, reflecting the ESRS as adopted by the European Commission in July following EFRAG’s simplification work in 2025. It carries several usability improvements over the 2024 version: datapoints are now categorised by distinct data type, references to the interactive ESRS in EFRAG’s Knowledge Hub are embedded as hyperlinks, and a separate version maps each datapoint back to the original 2023 standards, so users can trace how requirements have evolved.
A draft XBRL taxonomy has been prepared alongside the list and will go out for its own public consultation shortly, before being handed to ESMA and the Commission in November. The accompanying explanatory note sets out what has changed: a considerably simplified file structure, largely eliminated overlaps producing a flatter narrative tagging hierarchy, and far fewer Boolean elements now that “whether and how” phrasing has mostly gone from the standards. EFRAG has also aligned its datapoint naming conventions with the International Taxonomy Architecture guidelines published by XBRL International.
The explanatory note runs through various taxonomy design dilemmas, such as narrative-versus-numeric modelling, conditional datapoints, and interoperability with the ISSB and GRI. One detail we particularly enjoyed: EFRAG argues that a printed index of EU datapoints is unnecessary in a digital report, because an Inline XBRL viewer can simply find the facts. Quite so.
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