The FRWG database release accompanies the priorities, detailing seven IFRS accounting enforcement decisions and APM guidelines.

The 2026 priorities shape year-end reporting, requiring audit committees to align financial risk models with ESG targets and to provide clear double-materiality proof, while fixing digital tagging issues for reader-friendly filings.

In Europe, ESMA criticizes vague references like “based on science” or generic 1.5°C targets without showing how objectives meet criteria, demanding clear explanations to avoid misleading investors.

Regulators will assess whether announced policies address identified problems, whether there are concrete steps to resolve them, and whether there is coherence between policies, actions, and the financial resources allocated for implementation.

ESMA’s priorities aim to foster supervisory convergence among EU members and prevent greenwashing and divergences between balance sheets and climate commitments.

The publication aligns with ongoing CSRD-driven transparency reforms and a shift toward deeper ESRS compliance for large listed companies.

The priorities cover three domains: IFRS financial statements, ESRS sustainability statements, and European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) digital filings.

The regulator underscores the importance of double materiality, requiring companies to disclose both environmental and social impacts and the risks and opportunities they pose for the business, including value-chain effects.

ESMA warns that European companies overvalue positive sustainability impacts, at the expense of negative ones, making information quality a 2026 enforcement priority.

Explicitly stated targets matter: goals should be measurable with deadlines and testable results; failures, target changes, or methodological shifts must be communicated.

Key focus areas include liquidity risk disclosures, asset valuation assumptions, debt restructuring provisions under IFRS, rigor of double materiality assessments and linkage of Impacts, Risks, and Opportunities, policies, actions, and metrics under ESRS, and reducing ESEF tagging errors in the primary statement of changes in equity.

Enforcement will also seek coherence between risks described in sustainability reports and financial statements, including omissions of financial effects of relevant risks.