EcoVadis & VSME: How a VSME Report Improves Your EcoVadis Rating

EcoVadis is an important and internationally recognized sustainability rating for companies. It strengthens reputation, supports compliance with growing regulatory requirements, and enhances competitiveness through a transparent assessment of environmental, social, and ethical practices. A strong EcoVadis rating also increases trust among customers, investors, and business partners.

Reporting is a central component of the EcoVadis assessment methodology. To achieve a good score, companies should publish a publicly accessible sustainability report. While CSRD reports were previously the main reference, following the EU Omnibus procedure the VSME has also become a valid option for companies that are no longer subject to CSRD reporting requirements (< 1,000 employees and < €450 million annual turnover).

Why is a VSME report suitable as a foundation for EcoVadis?

1. Thematic overlap between VSME and EcoVadis

Since many disclosures from the VSME report are directly reflected in the EcoVadis questionnaire, data collection can be significantly simplified. Both frameworks often create additional workload and may lead to duplicated effort. At the same time, they also offer strong synergy potential: by aligning their underlying data base, companies can improve data quality and reduce overall effort. The following graphic highlights the key areas where VSME and EcoVadis requirements overlap.

One key aspect must be considered: EcoVadis defines the sustainability topics to be assessed strictly based on industry, company size, and geographic location, creating a narrow but standardized evaluation framework. Under VSME, however, companies must independently apply the “if applicable” principle and select and prioritize the most relevant topics for their business model from the extensive list provided in the Basic Module (Annex B).

2. Reducing the documentation burden

The VSME covers key sustainability areas such as environmental topics, social issues, and corporate governance. As a result, a VSME report can serve as supporting evidence for many EcoVadis questions - for example on labor rights, environmental management, or governance practices.

A typical EcoVadis questionnaire often includes close to one hundred questions with multiple answer options, each of which must be substantiated with supporting documents. However, since EcoVadis limits the number of different supporting attachments to a maximum of 55, a consolidated sustainability report allows companies to provide significantly more content within a single document.

It is important to note that EcoVadis applies specific requirements for accepting attachments, such as including a creation date and the company’s logo.

3. Recognized Standard by EcoVadis

In the context of formal reporting under EcoVadis question GEN 600, EcoVadis has officially recognized the VSME as a valid sustainability reporting standard for its rating since October 2025 (Question GEN600).

When indicated in the sustainability rating questionnaire, formal alignment of sustainability reports with the VSME standard is counted as a reporting indicator, impacting the four thematic areas: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement (EcoVadis, October 8, 2025).

Accordingly, the VSME can influence the final rating in a comparable way to a CSRD or GRI report - provided that it meets the formal requirements.

It is essential that the report is prepared in accordance with the respective standard. Merely referencing or loosely aligning with a standard is not sufficient. Similar to GRI, the distinction between “in accordance with” and “with reference to” is decisive.

If the report is additionally externally assured, this has a positive impact on the scoring, with different assessment levels applied.

Through this formal recognition, the VSME - when correctly implemented - serves as an excellent structured data foundation for the EcoVadis assessment and enables consistent and transparent responses to the questionnaire.

How Tanso supports

Tanso provides the VSME report in a structured and user-friendly format, enabling companies to report fully in accordance with the VSME standard. In addition, the contents of a VSME report can be directly accessed and reviewed by auditors within the Tanso platform. To ensure this, Tanso collaborates with auditing firms and supports companies in implementing regulatory requirements - from materiality analysis and CO₂ accounting to audit-ready ESRS and VSME reporting.

Through dedicated data fields, supplementary explanations, and customizable data points, companies can tag EcoVadis-relevant information within Tanso and integrate it into their VSME report.

As a result, Tanso supports individualized EcoVadis reporting based on robust data collection processes and serves as a single source of truth for sustainability data.

How DFGE supports

Our partner DFGE, as an official EcoVadis partner, can not only support companies in completing the EcoVadis questionnaire in a comprehensive and turnkey manner, but also help set up a VSME report based on the EcoVadis framework - thereby maximizing the synergies between EcoVadis and VSME.