EcoVadis questionnaires from customers, requests from your bank, B Corp, a CSR label or a CSRD customer: most ESG requests ask for the same information. With the VSME Medals, you gather it once, have it independently reviewed, and reuse it.
A new European reference: the VS
On 24 September 2026, the voluntary sustainability reporting standard of the European Commission, the VS, entered into force as a Delegated Act (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1560). It is designed for companies outside the CSRD scope: companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, or with more than 1,000 employees but a net turnover below €450 million. It takes over the VSME, the standard previously developed by EFRAG, with the same two modules: a Basic module and a Comprehensive module.
The VS also sets a ceiling. From the 2027 financial year, companies subject to the CSRD may no longer ask value-chain partners with fewer than 1,000 employees and an annual turnover below €450 million for more than the VS datapoints. The VS is becoming the common language between SMEs, their customers and their banks.
How the VSME Medals work
- One standard. The VSME Medals are built on the VS. Bronze corresponds to the Basic module, Silver to the Comprehensive module, and Gold adds disclosures on governance, targets, Scope 3 emissions and the value chain.
- Verified data. Every datapoint is documented and reviewed by an independent third party, SMT.
- Reused elsewhere. A medal level, together with its VS datapoints and audit trail, strengthens your answers to the leading ESG certifications, ratings, platforms and reporting frameworks.
What our analysis shows
In October 2026, we compared the datapoints of the VS (11 in the Basic module, 9 in the Comprehensive module), together with the additional disclosures required for Gold and the independent review behind every medal, with the requirements of 13 frameworks that SMEs encounter most often: six certifications, labels and ratings, two public or banking platforms built on the VS and five reporting frameworks. Each mapping was built requirement by requirement from the official documentation of each framework.
Each of these frameworks asks for 15 to 30 of these 30 elements. A company with a Bronze medal already reports 38% to 63% of them. With Silver, it reports about three quarters (67% to 79%). With Gold, it reports all of them.
Take EcoVadis: 26 of these elements feed its questionnaire, and a Silver medallist already has 19 of them documented and reviewed. For B Corp, all 30 are useful, 22 of them from Silver. For a customer reporting under the CSRD, 29 match the ESRS.
Platforms built on the VS, such as Kube ESG (Belgium) and the Portail RSE (France), use the same Basic and Comprehensive datapoints: medal data can be entered as is, with the independent review on top.
Which medal for which goal?
- Bronze: does your company already collect structured data on energy, emissions, workforce and governance? If not, Bronze may be the right entry point. The VS Basic module covers the essential data set and is accessible to most SMEs within a few weeks of structured work.
- Silver: do your clients or banks ask for information covering all three pillars, Environment, Social and Governance? If yes, Silver should be your target. It is the level most procurement teams and financing institutions refer to.
- Gold: is your company already working with a more advanced ESG framework and able to provide evidence beyond the core VS? If yes, Gold may be the right target. It is designed for companies that want to demonstrate a higher level of ESG maturity.
Go further
The VSME Medals Reporting Guide gives, for each framework, the requirement-by-requirement mapping and the medal level that feeds each requirement. Discover your medal level on vsme-medals.eu.