What is the VSME standard? A guide for SME suppliers

More and more large companies are asking their suppliers to provide sustainability data — often through long, company-specific questionnaires in Excel or a portal. For an SME supplier working with multiple clients, that quickly means filling in the same information ten times in ten different formats. The VSME standard was developed by EFRAG to solve that problem structurally.

Where does the VSME standard come from?

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires large, listed companies to report on their entire value chain — including Scope 3 emissions, most of which originate with suppliers. Because SMEs themselves don't fall under the CSRD, but still need to supply that data to clients who do, the European Commission published a recommendation in July 2025: the VSME. A voluntary, but strongly standardized questionnaire built specifically for non-listed micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

What's in the VSME Basic Module?

The Basic Module consists of seven sections, B1 through B7: general company information, environmental and social risks, energy consumption and emissions, water use, waste, own workforce, and policies/code of conduct. Together, these data points give a compact but complete sustainability profile — enough to satisfy most client and lender requests, without the reporting burden of a full CSRD report.

Why does this matter for your business?

If you supply large, European enterprises, chances are you'll receive a data request this year or next that's already based (knowingly or not) on the VSME structure. Companies that have already built their VSME profile once can answer that request in minutes instead of weeks. A VSME profile is also increasingly used as a condition for tenders, financing and insurance.

That's exactly why we're building verified.supply: fill in your VSME profile once, and share it automatically with every client who asks for it.