Transferring Data from an Existing Double Materiality Assessment based on the 2023 Delegated Act to the Simplified Draft

If you have already completed a Double Materiality Assessment based on the previous ESRS standard (2023 Delegated Act), you can now transfer this data into a new DMA based on the Simplified Draft. This allows you to reuse existing assessments and content without having to conduct the entire analysis from scratch.

How It Works

When creating a new DMA report based on the Simplified ESRS Draft:

• Data from an existing DMA report (based on the 2023 Delegated Act) can be copied over.
• Once selected, data from the existing report is transferred into the new reporting format.
• This enables you to continue working with previously captured data within the context of the new draft structure.

Which Content Is Transferred?

During the DMA transfer process, your selection of sustainability topics—as well as your Impacts, Risks, and Opportunities (IROs)—are automatically transferred into the new structure of the Simplified Draft.

There are several scenarios regarding the transfer of sustainability topics:

• The sustainability topic remains unchanged (e.g., E1 "Energy").
• The topic has merely been renamed (e.g., E4 "Impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services" becomes "Ecosystem services").
• The topic has been merged in the Simplified Draft and consolidated into a broader, overarching sustainability topic (e.g., S1 "Working conditions – Secure employment" and "Working conditions – Working time" are consolidated into "Working conditions (including adequate wages, work-life balance, working time, secure employment, social protection)").
• The topic has been removed in the Simplified Draft (e.g., E1 "Pollution of living organisms and food resources").

What Happens to Merged Sustainability Topics?

When multiple existing sustainability topics are merged into a single new topic:

• the associated IROs are consolidated within that shared sustainability topic;
• existing assessments are automatically carried over.

Behavior in Step 1:

If at least one of the original sustainability topics was included or activated in Step 1, the new, merged sustainability topic will also be automatically included.

Behavior regarding manual materiality assessments:

For manual materiality assessments in Step 4—or for assessments established via data import—the following applies:

• The highest materiality rating among the merged topics is adopted.
• The corresponding justification for that highest rating is also adopted.

Example:

Sustainability Topic A → "Low"

Sustainability Topic B → "High"

The new, merged sustainability topic is rated as "High" in the Simplified Draft. The justification from the topic with the highest rating is also adopted.

What happens to removed sustainability topics?

Extraction and Use of Marine Resources

This sustainability topic—originally from the "Water" domain—was successfully mapped to and merged under the new overarching sustainability topic "Water Consumption" within the Simplified Draft. Existing content and assessments are automatically carried over during this process.

Pollution of Living Organisms and Food Resources

This sustainability topic—originally from the "Pollution" domain—could not be mapped to any new overarching sustainability topic and was therefore removed from the Simplified Draft.

To prevent data loss, the existing IROs associated with this topic were automatically copied into a separate, company-specific sustainability topic. This ensures that all existing information remains accessible and can be individually edited, reclassified, or deleted.

Existing Data Is Retained

The original DMA report remains unchanged.

This data transfer feature allows users to quickly test the Simplified Draft and efficiently reuse work that has already been completed. For further information on the changes to the Double Materiality Assessment in the ESRS Simplified Draft, please refer to this article on the DMA process.