---
title: "CSRD in Germany: which legal basis to cite in English – Jetzt Übersetzt"
description: "Germany still hasn’t passed the CSRD-Umsetzungsgesetz. Here’s the legal basis wave-one reporters cite in 2026—and how §289d HGB reads in English."
url: "https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/blog/csrd-germany-no-transposition-law-legal-basis-english-translation"
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CSRD §289d HGB sustainability reporting DE ↔ EN translation legal citation

# Germany still has no CSRD law: which legal basis your sustainability report cites—and how to translate it into English

The Umsetzungsgesetz is stuck in committee and the EU infringement proceeding is live—yet wave-one sustainability statements are shipping in German and English. As of October 2026.

![Alexander Kirsch-Clayton](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/assets/images/alexander.jpg) By [Alexander Kirsch-Clayton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderkc/), Specialist translator DE ↔ EN October 20, 2026 ·9 min read [Jetzt Übersetzt on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/jetztuebersetzt/) [ProZ](https://www.proz.com/profile/138291)

As of October 2026, Germany still has no CSRD law—the transposition bill sits in a Bundestag committee while the European Commission runs an infringement proceeding against Germany. Wave-one sustainability statements are being written, audited, and translated into English anyway. Which legal basis you cite, and how it survives in English, is the problem this article untangles.

## The short answer first (as of October 2026)

This cycle, the questions reporting teams face boil down to three, so here are the answers, dated October 20, 2026, with the sources named in each section below.

1. Is the CSRD valid in Germany even though the Umsetzungsgesetz hasn’t passed? Yes—as EU law. Directive (EU) 2022/2464 has applied EU-wide since its adoption on December 14, 2022, but it is not transposed into the Handelsgesetzbuch (HGB). Directives need national transposition, so until the Umsetzungsgesetz enters into force, the binding German basis for the sustainability statement remains §§ 289b–289e and 315b–315c HGB as introduced by the CSR Directive Implementation Act (CSR-RUG) of 2017.
2. Which legal basis does a German company cite in its 2026 sustainability statement? The CSR-RUG route: §§ 289b et seq. and 315b to 315c HGB, with the ESRS applied as a framework under § 289d and § 315c (3) HGB. Directive (EU) 2022/2464—amended by Directive (EU) 2025/794 and the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2026/470—sits above it as EU law. Roughly 2,500 German companies remain in scope under the amended thresholds, down from about 17,000, per expert testimony at the April 13, 2026 hearing.
3. How do you cite § 289d HGB in English? “Section 289d of the German Commercial Code (HGB)” on first mention, “Section 289d HGB” thereafter—never a bare “§289d” in English running text, and “in conjunction with” for “i.V.m.” A real wave-one English edition resolves it as “Section 315c (3) in conjunction with Section 289d HGB.”

Quotable status line: As of October 2026, Germany has still not transposed the CSRD into the Handelsgesetzbuch—the government draft (BT-Drs. 21/1857) has been in the Bundestag’s Legal Affairs Committee since a public hearing on April 13, 2026, with no second or third reading since, while EU infringement proceedings against Germany have reached the reasoned-opinion stage. Wave-one German reporters nevertheless publish sustainability statements under §§ 289b–289e and 315b–315c HGB (the CSR-RUG route of 2017), applying the ESRS as frameworks under § 289d and § 315c (3) HGB—so every DE ↔ EN report pair must reconcile those German citations with Directive (EU) 2022/2464 and the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2026/470 in both language versions, knowing the German basis may still change mid-cycle.

## Where the bill actually stands in October 2026

The obligation to transpose was never in doubt: the transposition deadline for the CSRD lapsed on July 6, 2024, as the Federal Ministry of Justice’s own legislation page confirms. The European Commission reacted on September 26, 2024, opening an infringement proceeding against Germany for failing to transpose the directive into national law. Germany received a letter of formal notice with two months to respond—together with 16 other member states that were equally late.

That proceeding has since escalated. According to the federal government’s answer of August 27, 2026 (BT-Drs. 21/7745), the procedure has reached the stage of the reasoned opinion—the second formal step before referral to the Court of Justice. The same document makes one thing very clear: the government names no adoption date, because “Der parlamentarische Zeitplan liegt beim Bundestag.” The parliamentary timetable rests with the Bundestag.

And the Bundestag is where the bill is stuck—but it is a different bill than the one most English-language coverage still references. The 2024 draft (BT-Drs. 20/12787, from the 20th electoral period) lapsed with the February 23, 2025 election under the Diskontinuität principle. Its successor is the current government draft, BT-Drs. 21/1857, implementing the CSRD “in der durch die Richtlinie (EU) 2025/794 geänderten Fassung”—that is, in the version amended by the 2025 stop-the-clock directive. It followed a Referentenentwurf of July 10, 2025 and a Regierungsentwurf of September 3, 2025.

Since then: first reading on October 9, 2025, a Bundesrat statement on October 17, 2025, and a public hearing in the Bundestag’s Legal Affairs Committee (Ausschuss für Recht und Verbraucherschutz) on April 13, 2026, on the “Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie (EU) 2022/2464.” No second or third reading has taken place since that hearing. Experts at the hearing spoke of “erhebliche Unsicherheit bei berichtspflichtigen Unternehmen”—considerable uncertainty among reporting companies—and testimony put the scope under the amended thresholds at roughly 2,500 German companies, down from about 17,000. I won’t add a prediction about when the Bundestag passes it, because the government itself declines to name a date, and neither will I.

## What German wave-one issuers actually cite today

The report doesn’t wait for the committee. Under the transitional regime—the CSR-RUG of 2017, which continues to apply until the Umsetzungsgesetz enters into force—the relevant HGB provisions are § 289b (duty to issue a non-financial statement), § 289c (contents), § 289d (frameworks), and § 289e (omission), with §§ 315b–315c mirroring them for listed parent companies. The framework clause doing the heavy lifting is § 289d HGB:

> “Die Kapitalgesellschaft kann für die Erstellung der nichtfinanziellen Erklärung nationale, europäische oder internationale Rahmenwerke nutzen. In der Erklärung ist anzugeben, ob die Kapitalgesellschaft für die Erstellung der nichtfinanziellen Erklärung ein Rahmenwerk genutzt hat.” — In English practice: the company may use national, European, or international frameworks for the non-financial statement and must disclose which framework was used—or that none was.

That clause is why German reporters can already apply the ESRS today. The ESRS are not an ordinary EU “law” but a delegated act: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772, in force since December 2023, supplementing the Accounting Directive 2013/34/EU. The directive underneath it all—Directive (EU) 2022/2464 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 14, 2022—places sustainability reporting in the management report, which is why every German report pair discusses “Lagebericht” and “management report” as the same document.

What this looks like in a shipped English edition is best taken from a real one. Wacker Chemie’s 2025 annual report resolves the German basis like this, and it is as close to a market-standard citation convention as the wave-one world currently has:

> “The European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) are used in their entirety as a framework for the Group declaration in accordance with Section 315c (3) in conjunction with Section 289d HGB.” — and: “This Sustainability Report simultaneously meets the requirements defined in Sections 289b et seq. and 315b to 315c HGB.”

## How § 289d HGB reads in an English report

The English edition has to resolve every one of those German references the way an English-native auditor would expect—and the German edition has to carry the same citations so the two versions reconcile page-for-page. The convention I work with, and the one you see in published wave-one reports: full rendering on first mention, short form everywhere after.

### The citation table: German reference → English rendering

- § 289b HGB → Section 289b of the German Commercial Code (HGB) — duty to issue a non-financial statement
- § 289c HGB → Section 289c HGB — contents of the non-financial statement
- § 289d HGB → Section 289d HGB — use of frameworks for reporting (first mention: “Section 289d of the German Commercial Code (HGB)”)
- §§ 315b–315c HGB → Sections 315b to 315c HGB — the listed-parent-company counterparts (plural “Sections,” connected by “to,” never a hyphen range or “ff.”)
- CSR-RUG → CSR Directive Implementation Act (CSR-RUG) of 2017 — the transitional act currently governing German sustainability reporting
- Richtlinie (EU) 2022/2464 → Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Directive (EU) 2022/2464 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 14, 2022
- Delegierte Verordnung (EU) 2023/2772 → Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 of July 31, 2023 — the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), in force since December 2023
- Richtlinie (EU) 2026/470 → Directive (EU) 2026/470 of February 26, 2026 amending Directives 2006/43/EC, 2013/34/EU, (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 (the Omnibus directive)
- i.V.m. → “in conjunction with” · gem. → “in accordance with” · a.F. → “old version” · i.d.F. → “as amended” · § … ff. → “Section … et seq.”

Three mistakes an English-native reader—and any auditor with a foot in both languages—spots immediately:

First, a bare “§289d” left in English running text with no “Section” anywhere near it: it signals a German document run through a grammar pass, not a translated one. Second, translating “HGB” as “German Commercial Code” and then dropping the abbreviation, so the German statute becomes unfindable for anyone who needs to check it—keep “(HGB)” in parentheses at first mention and the abbreviation thereafter. Third, rendering “§§ 289b ff.” as “Sections 289b ff.”—the German abbreviation is meaningless in English; the rendering is “Sections 289b et seq.”

One more thing the table quietly enforces: consistency between the two editions. If the German edition says “gemäß § 289d HGB in Verbindung mit § 315c Abs. 3 HGB” and the English says “in accordance with Section 315c (3) in conjunction with Section 289d HGB,” the references must resolve to the same provisions in the same order of authority. That is a check I run in every DE ↔ EN reporting pair, because it fails silently when each language is edited by a different team.

## Translating terminology that doesn’t exist in German yet

The harder half of the bilingual problem goes the other direction. The Omnibus Directive (EU) 2026/470, adopted on February 26, 2026, defers digital tagging: in the directive’s own words, “undertakings should not be required to mark up their sustainability reporting until rules are adopted by means of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815.” That is a pure EU-law concept with no anchored German statutory term behind it, because the German implementation law that would carry one hasn’t been enacted. German reporting teams still need to write about it—in both languages.

In the files I see, teams settle on a small set of German renderings and stick to them: “digitales Tagging” and “maschinenlesbare Kennzeichnung” for digital tagging or mark-up, and “Datenpunkte” for ESRS data points. I don’t pretend there is an official answer—there isn’t, yet. What I hold renderings to are three criteria: what the German Umsetzungsgesetz will use once enacted (which becomes binding overnight), what the official German titles on EUR-Lex use today, and what the auditor’s German team will accept in review. When those three disagree, you pick one, document the choice, and move on.

This inconsistency is already live, by the way. The official German title of the ESRS delegated regulation reads “…zur Ergänzung der Richtlinie 2013/34/EU im Hinblick auf Normen für die Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung”—while the pending German bill’s own title uses “hinsichtlich” where EUR-Lex uses “im Hinblick auf.” Two official German texts, two different prepositions for the same act. That’s exactly the kind of thing a termbase has to decide once, or your German and English editions drift apart on a legal citation.

## When the law arrives mid-cycle

The Umsetzungsgesetz will enter into force at some point—it may be after your report has gone to translation, after layout, or after publication. For a DE ↔ EN project, that has three concrete consequences. First, the new law can renumber or restructure the very HGB provisions you are citing, so your citation table is provisional until the day the files ship. Second, the terminology that is currently a workaround (“digitales Tagging” and friends) gets replaced by statutory definitions you must adopt verbatim. Third, anything you translated under the old regime now sits in your translation memory as history.

The professional answer is a citation changelog per project. Every legal reference gets one entry with the source it was verified against and the date it was verified; if the legal basis changes mid-cycle, both language versions get the update in the same pass, with the same effective date, so the German and English editions never disagree about which law they describe. Comparison periods stay untouched—prior-year figures are translated under the law of their own reporting year, not retrofitted. And both editions carry the same date stamp: “Stand: Oktober 2026” and “As of October 2026” belong on facing pages, not on different ones.

Whether an act passed mid-cycle applies retroactively to a report already in production is a legal question, not a translation one—and I don’t answer legal questions. Your counsel does. What I can promise is that when they decide, both language versions will say the same thing, correctly cited.

## Checklist for briefing your translator

If you hand a reporting project to a DE ↔ EN translator, these seven items are what separate a clean bilingual pair from two documents that quietly disagree about the law:

1. Fundstellenliste: a binding list of every legal reference the report cites, with the exact rendering to be used in each language—this list outranks any individual drafter’s preference.
2. Citation style: full rendering on first mention plus short form thereafter; the handling of “in conjunction with,” “et seq.,” and the “(HGB)” convention, agreed before the first segment is translated.
3. Reference reports: one or two published report pairs you accept as the style benchmark (a wave-one English edition like the one quoted above works well).
4. The date of legal status: one dated “Stand/as of” line, identical in both editions, stating which version of which law the citations were verified against.
5. A named contact for legal questions: someone whose answer is binding when the bill moves or a citation is ambiguous—because it will move, and something will be ambiguous.
6. The termbase: the working German renderings for not-yet-defined EU concepts, flagged as provisional, with the criteria they’ll yield to once the statute names its own terms.
7. A change protocol: what happens to both language versions if the legal basis changes after translation starts—same pass, same date, changelog entry, comparison periods untouched.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is the CSRD valid in Germany even though the Umsetzungsgesetz hasn’t passed?

Yes, as EU law. Directive (EU) 2022/2464 has applied since December 2022, and Germany is under infringement pressure for transposing it late—the deadline lapsed July 6, 2024, and the proceeding has reached the reasoned-opinion stage. But a directive only binds companies through national law, so the operative German basis for the statement itself remains the CSR-RUG-era HGB provisions until the Umsetzungsgesetz enters into force.

### Which legal basis do we cite in our 2026 sustainability statement?

§§ 289b–289e and 315b–315c HGB as introduced by the CSR-RUG of 2017, with the ESRS applied as the framework under § 289d and § 315c (3) HGB, and Directive (EU) 2022/2464 named as the directive being implemented—as amended by Directive (EU) 2025/794 and Directive (EU) 2026/470 for scope. Roughly 2,500 German companies remain in scope under the amended thresholds, per testimony at the April 13, 2026 hearing.

### How do we cite § 289d HGB in English?

“Section 289d of the German Commercial Code (HGB)” on first mention, “Section 289d HGB” thereafter, with “in conjunction with” for “i.V.m.”—as in the published convention “Section 315c (3) in conjunction with Section 289d HGB.” Never leave the “§” symbol unaccompanied in English running text.

### Is digital tagging required for our 2026 report?

Not under the Omnibus directive. Directive (EU) 2026/470 provides that undertakings should not be required to mark up their sustainability reporting until tagging rules are adopted by means of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815. When those rules arrive is a question I deliberately don’t predict here—what matters for your report pair is that the German rendering of the concept is fixed in your termbase before you need it.

## The bottom line

Legal uncertainty is not the same as untranslatable. Germany’s CSRD vacuum is real—the bill in committee, the reasoned opinion, the scope figures in flux—but none of it changes what a bilingual report pair needs: a citation table each language resolves identically, terminology decisions made once and recorded, a dated status line in both editions, and a change protocol for the day the Bundestag finally votes. Get those four things right in the briefing and the uncertainty stays where it belongs: in Berlin, not in your English edition.

If your sustainability statement ships in German and English and the legal citations need to hold up in both, that is squarely my line of work: specialist DE ↔ EN reporting translation at a flat €0.85 per standard line (a standard line is 55 characters including spaces, the German-market convention for pricing report text). The details are on the [services page](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/services), and you can send me your Fundstellenliste via the [contact form](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/contact)—I’ll tell you within one exchange whether your citation table will survive the audit.

## Sources

1. [Deutscher Bundestag – Textarchiv KW16/2026: Anhörung zur Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung](https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2026/kw16-pa-recht-nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung-1164694) (accessed 2026-10-20)
2. [BT-Drs. 21/7745 – Antwort der Bundesregierung (August 2026)](https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/21/077/2107745.pdf) (accessed 2026-10-20)
3. [BMJV – Gesetzgebungsverfahren: CSRD-Umsetzungsgesetz](https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/DE/2025_CSRD-UmsG.html) (accessed 2026-10-20)
4. [DRSC – CSRD: EU-Kommission eröffnet Vertragsverletzungsverfahren gegen Deutschland](https://www.drsc.de/news/csrd-eu-kommission-eroeffnet-vertragsverletzungsverfahren-gegen-deutschland/) (accessed 2026-10-20)
5. [csr-tools.com – CSRD-Umsetzung in Deutschland: Orientierung in unsicheren Zeiten](https://csr-tools.com/blog/csrd-umsetzung-in-deutschland-orientierung-in-unsicheren-zeiten/) (accessed 2026-10-20)
6. [gesetze-im-internet.de – § 289d HGB (Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung)](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__289d.html) (accessed 2026-10-20)
7. [WACKER Chemie AG – Annual Report 2025, Principles for Preparing the Sustainability Report](https://reports.wacker.com/2025/annual-report/management-report/sustainability-report/general-information/principles-for-preparing-the-sustainability-report.html) (accessed 2026-10-20)
8. [EUR-Lex – Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2022/2464/oj/eng) (accessed 2026-10-20)
9. [EUR-Lex – Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 (ESRS)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/2772/oj/eng) (accessed 2026-10-20)
10. [EUR-Lex – Directive (EU) 2026/470 (Omnibus)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2026/470/oj/eng) (accessed 2026-10-20)