CSRD supplier requirements do not regulate you directly — they reach Balkan companies as questionnaires and scorecards sent by the EU customers who are regulated.
CSRD supplier requirements will reach you anyway.
The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive binds EU companies — and obliges them to report on their value chains. For a Western Balkan supplier, CSRD doesn't arrive as regulation. It arrives as a customer email with a data request attached.
How an EU directive reaches a Balkan supplier
CSRD requires in-scope EU companies to report sustainability information under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) — including climate data that covers not just their own operations but their value chain. A reporting company cannot complete its climate disclosures without emissions data from significant suppliers. So it asks for it.
That's the entire mechanism. No Balkan government needs to transpose anything, and no one will fine you for not answering. The pressure is commercial: your customer has a legal reporting obligation, you hold part of the data it needs, and suppliers who make that easy are worth more than suppliers who don't.
What CSRD supplier requirements look like
Supplier-facing CSRD requests are more standardised than they used to be:
Typical contents of a CSRD-driven supplier request
- GHG emissions — your Scope 1 and Scope 2 for a stated year, with methodology.
- Energy consumption — total and, increasingly, the renewable share.
- Basic sustainability information — policies, certifications, incidents, sometimes workforce data.
- A defined format — a questionnaire, a portal, or increasingly a reference to the voluntary SME standard (VSME), designed precisely so smaller value-chain companies can answer big-company requests in a proportionate way.
The emissions section is where most suppliers stall — and it's the part that can't be written the week the questionnaire arrives, because it depends on a year of records. The rest is mostly document gathering.
How to answer a CSRD questionnaire
A CSRD questionnaire looks heavy, but the emissions part follows the same six steps every time. Work through them in order and the form fills itself.
- Read what is actually asked. Scope 1 and 2 only, or Scope 3 as well? Which year? A questionnaire, a portal, or a VSME-based format?
- Fix the boundary and the year. Which sites and gases are in, for which twelve months. Say it once and use it everywhere.
- Gather the evidence. Electricity invoices, fuel purchases, refrigerant top-ups. The records you already keep are the evidence a reviewer will accept.
- Calculate with documented factors. Use the factor for your grid and fuel, not a European average, and keep the trace from each figure back to its invoice.
- State exclusions plainly. Name the Scope 3 categories you have not measured. A declared gap is defensible; a silent one is not.
- Keep the inventory. The next questionnaire, a CBAM request or a bank baseline will ask for the same numbers from a different angle.
Our guide to answering an emissions data request walks through the same steps inside the product, and what to prepare for a supplier sustainability questionnaire lists the documents to have ready.
The sensible supplier strategy
Don't build a CSRD project. Build the one asset every version of every request draws on: a company-level GHG inventory with evidence behind it — monthly energy and activity records, documented factors, figures a reviewer can trace. With that in place, a CSRD questionnaire becomes an afternoon of copying numbers into a form; a CBAM request becomes a finer-grained view of the same data; a bank's green-lending condition becomes an export. One discipline serves all three — which is why the companies that start with the inventory, rather than with any single regulation, stop being surprised by acronyms.
How Karbon360 fits in
Karbon360 builds and maintains that one underlying asset — the verifiable inventory every customer request draws on.
Answer many requests once
A single, maintained GHG inventory feeds CSRD questionnaires, CBAM data requests and lender reporting — instead of a scramble per request.
Data their reviewer accepts
Your customer's disclosures get assured. Figures with documented factors and a calculation trace survive that review; ad-hoc estimates don't.
Made for the recipient
Reports and exports in English, structured for the sustainability team on the other side of the questionnaire.
Frequently asked questions
Not directly, in most cases. It binds EU companies in its scope — but their value-chain reporting is how the data requirement reaches you, as customer requests.
Most commonly Scope 1 and 2 emissions with methodology, energy consumption, and basic sustainability information — via questionnaire, portal, or the voluntary SME standard (VSME) format.
The 2025 Omnibus changed timelines and scope, and details may keep moving — but buyer-side data collection hasn't reversed. The inventory discipline is identical under every version and takes months to establish; waiting mostly means starting later.
No — CBAM prices carbon on specific imported goods with installation-level data; CSRD pulls company-level sustainability data through the value chain. Some exporters face both, served by the same underlying inventory.