In short
- Start with the kind of instrument. A Communication and a Regulation are not the same species and half the confusion resolves here.
- Read the conjunction in the operative article. AND and OR give opposite answers on the same numbers.
- Check that the text you are reading is actually in force. Adopted is not in force.
Five steps, in order, and they take about twenty minutes per instrument. What kind of instrument is it. Which article names who it binds. Is the test AND or OR, and what are its limbs. Which date governs you, the EU one or your national one. And is the version you are reading actually in force. The hard part is the third step, because a single conjunction decides most borderline cases. Start with the first step anyway, because it eliminates more claimed obligations than any of the others.
We run this on our own fact base. It has refuted two claimed obligations this year and corrected one error on our own published guide, which is the reason to trust the method rather than the summary.
What is the sequence?
- Identify the instrument type.
- Find the operative article that names who it binds.
- Read the conjunction and the limbs of the test.
- Establish which date governs you.
- Confirm the text you are reading is in force.
Do them in that order. Steps one and five each dispose of whole claimed obligations without any arithmetic, and doing them last means you have already wasted the arithmetic.
What kind of instrument is it?
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the cheapest one.
| Instrument type | What it binds | How it reaches a company | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulation | Everyone, directly | Immediately, on its own terms | EUDR, PPWR |
| Directive | Member States, not companies | Through national transposing law | CSRD |
| Delegated act | As its parent act provides | Only once published in the Official Journal | The ESRS |
| Recommendation | Nobody | Not at all, unless another act points at it | The VSME recommendation |
| Covenant | Signatories, unenforceably | By reputation only | Green Deal Duurzame Zorg |
| Private scheme | Certificate holders, contractually | Through buyers who award on it | CO2-Prestatieladder |
| Communication | Nobody | Not at all | The EU textiles strategy |
Two rows there routinely appear on compliance calendars where they do not belong. The EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles is a Commission Communication whose substantive content is a list of things the Commission will propose, review or consider. It creates no obligation on any company, sets no deadline and carries no penalty. It sets direction, and that is a different sentence from applying to you.
The Green Deal covenant is more pointed still: its own article 14a records that the parties agree its commitments are not enforceable in court, and article 13a lets any party withdraw on three months' notice.
Which article names who it binds?
Go to the operative article, not the recitals and not the explanatory memorandum.
For CSRD that is Article 19a(1) of Directive 2013/34/EU for individual undertakings and Article 29a(1) for parent undertakings on a consolidated basis. The obligations live in the Accounting Directive, not in the directive people call CSRD, which is an amending directive. That is why nobody can find the text: they are reading the amending instrument rather than the amended one.
This step also tells you whether the rule binds by size or by role. PPWR binds by role in the packaging chain rather than by company size: a small converter is in scope of the product requirements, and only specific articles carve out micro-enterprises, not the regulation as a whole. EUDR binds by role too, an operator or trader placing goods on the market, but it is not entirely size-blind: non-SME operators and traders come in from 30 December 2026, while operators and traders that are natural persons, micro or small undertakings established as such by 31 December 2024 get a deferred start of 30 June 2027, except for products already covered by the EU Timber Regulation, which stay on 30 December 2026. Either way, size does not exempt you; at most it moves your date.
Is the test AND or OR, and what are its limbs?
Here is the hard part.
Article 19a(1), since Directive (EU) 2026/470, reaches undertakings which, on their balance sheet dates, exceed a net turnover of EUR 450 000 000 and an average number of 1 000 employees during the financial year. The conjunction is and. Both tests must be exceeded. A company with EUR 2 billion of turnover and 600 employees is out. A company with 4,000 employees and EUR 300 million of turnover is out.
Then check what the limbs actually are. There is no balance sheet limb in that test. If a guide describes two of three criteria including a balance sheet figure, it is describing the separate large-undertaking definition in Article 3(4) of the Accounting Directive, which is a different test for a different purpose. That error was live on our own CSRD guide until August 2026, and we say so because it is the most common error in the field.
Limbs matter in the other direction too. The protected undertaking definition that carries the value chain cap is written on employees alone, with no turnover limb: an undertaking that does not exceed, on its balance sheet date, an average of 1,000 employees during the preceding financial year, and that is in the value chain of a reporting undertaking. So a company can fail the turnover test, be comfortably outside CSRD, and still be over 1,000 employees and therefore unprotected. Two tests that look similar produce different populations. We work through the consequences in which ESG questions you can refuse.
Finally, check how the limb is measured and when. Dutch WPM is assessed fresh every year on 1 January, per KvK-registered entity rather than per group, and it counts only employees contracted for at least 20 paid hours a month under an employment contract or public law appointment. Separate KvK numbers report separately. A group-level headcount answers none of that.
Which date governs you, and is the text in force?
Two questions that catch people in opposite ways.
For a directive, the EU date is not your date. The revised CSRD scope applies for financial years starting on or after 1 January 2027, and Member States must transpose Articles 1, 2 and 3 of Directive (EU) 2026/470 by 19 March 2027. The obligation reaches you through national law, so the date that governs you is national. Directives also hand Member States options: the relief for financial years 2025 and 2026 for undertakings below the new thresholds is a Member State option, not an exemption you can claim.
For a delegated act, adopted is not in force. The Commission adopted two on 3 July 2026, C(2026) 5010 revising the ESRS and C(2026) 5011 establishing the voluntary standard. Both were still in Parliament and Council scrutiny on 28 August 2026, and the Commission's own level 2 page describes each as not in force until published in the Official Journal. Until then the standards in force are Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 as amended by (EU) 2025/1416. Any article describing the content of the new acts is describing a forecast.
What did this method actually change?
Three results worth naming, because a method is only as good as what it overturns.
A claimed procurement obligation that does not exist. There is no dated public procurement requirement obliging Dutch schools, MBO institutions, hogescholen or universities to measure, report or account for CO2. What exists is a national policy agenda and a voluntary manifest under which each organisation sets its own ambition, plus the ordinary duty to tender above EU thresholds, which attaches no environmental criterion. Our own fact base overstated this and we marked it refuted on 28 August 2026.
A strategy treated as a rule. The textiles strategy came off our list of things that apply to an apparel brand. What does reach a brand's carbon number is the substantiation regime for claims it has already made, which is a different mechanism and one we cover in our claims checklist.
Our own threshold error. Corrected, publicly, rather than quietly softened.
Where do you start?
With the two instruments that are actually likely to reach you, rather than with the longest list you can find.
For most companies that is one reporting duty, if any, and one commercial demand that behaves like a duty. Run the five steps on both. Then build the underlying data once, because the answer to every one of them starts with the same inventory, and rebuilding it per instrument is where the money goes. The VSME standard is the shape to aim at below the thresholds, and carbon footprint consulting is the shortcut if the first year is the obstacle.
You can start the calculation yourself on a free account with no sales call. The platform serves 5,000+ users and covers more than 20,000 spend-based and activity-based factors.
One expectation to set. A Small Business reviewer on G2 said in August 2026 that getting the data in is manual and takes effort, and that once it is loaded the tool works well. The first load is the project. Everything after it is maintenance.
Sources: Directive (EU) 2026/470, Directive (EU) 2022/2464, Directive 2013/34/EU Articles 3(4), 19a and 29a, Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772, Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1416, C(2026) 5010 and C(2026) 5011 as adopted and not in force, COM(2022) 141 final, Green Deal C-238, Besluit CO2-reductie werkgebonden personenmobiliteit, PIANOo education procurement guidance. Verified 28 August 2026.
Facts on this page were last verified on 2026-09-17.
