Consob has determined the criteria envisaged by article 6 of Regulation no. 20267 of 2018, for the examination of non-financial information, for the purpose of identifying all the subjects whose non-financial declarations published in 2021 and 2022 are subject to control (resolution no. 22524 and resolution no. 22525 of November 30, 2022).

The regulatory provision defines, by way of example but not limited to, the parameters representing the risk on the basis of which to identify the set of subjects whose non-financial declarations will be subjected to control. In particular, paragraph 2 of article 6 of Regulation no. 20267 of 2018 provides that Consob establishes the selection parameters for each year, taking into account, among other things:

1. of the reports received from the control body or from the auditor appointed to carry out the statutory audit of the financial statements;
2. the cases in which the designated auditor expresses a certified statement, a negative statement or issues a statement of impossibility to issue a statement;
3. significant information received from other public administrations or interested parties;
4. of the elements acquired in relation to issuers subject to financial reporting control pursuant to article 89-quater of the issuers' regulation which may be relevant for non-financial reporting.

The regulation also provides for random selection models for the identification of additional subjects to be included in the control, even in the absence of significant risk parameters (paragraph 3, article 6).

Consob, for the non-financial declarations published in 2021 and relating to the 2020 financial year, taking into account that the conditions for the application of the parameters established by the aforementioned art. 6, paragraph 2, letters a9, b) and c has established:

1. with reference to the parameter referred to in point d) of the aforementioned art. 6, paragraph 2, to identify a group of subjects who have been selected for the purposes of art. 89-quater of the Consob Issuers' Regulation, for which all the areas of risk for non-financial reporting highlighted in the ESMA Public Statement containing the European common enforcement priorities for 2020 annual financial reports are more relevant;
2. to consider, for the purposes of the selection, also the results of the supervisory activity carried out by Consob on the non-financial statements published in 2020 and relating to the 2019 financial year of certain companies, in particular in cases in which elements have been acquired regarding the presence of areas for improvement in the content of the declarations themselves or in the data collection and drafting procedures.

Consob has also determined that the criterion for random selection is the extraction of a certain number of subjects, net of the companies identified on the basis of the aforesaid criteria, through a procedure of random generation of repeatable numbers.

Consob has also determined, for the non-financial statements published in 2022 and relating to the 2021 financial year:

1. to take into account the elements established by the aforementioned art. 6, paragraph 2, letters a) and b), i.e. of the selections received by the supervisory body and of the significant information received from other public administrations and from interested parties, since the conditions for the application of the relative parameters have been verified;
2. on the other hand, not to take into account the elements referred to in point b), since the conditions have not been met;
3. with reference to the parameter referred to in point d) of the aforementioned art. 6, paragraph 2 and taking into account the Public Statement of ESMA containing the European common enforcement priorities for 2021 annual financial reports ("ECEP 2021"), to identify a set of bank issuers that have been selected on the basis of the elements acquired in the of supervision pursuant to art. 89-quater of the Issuers' Regulation, involved in the first climate stress test of the European Central Bank, giving priority to issuers never selected for control in the recent past, also applying a rotation criterion;
4. to consider, for the purposes of the selection, also the results of the supervisory activity already carried out by Consob on certain companies, in particular in cases in which elements have been acquired regarding the presence of areas for improvement in the content of the declarations themselves or in the procedures data collection and drafting of the same;
5. to also evaluate the elements that come from the auditors, other than the cases already considered in points a) and b) of paragraph 2 of the aforementioned article 6, selecting those subjects who have published a non-financial statement in relation to which the auditor has formalized a limitation on the examination carried out on some specific points of the non-financial statement other than the information required pursuant to article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 ("the Taxonomy Regulation");
6. to take into consideration the indications provided by ESMA in ECEP 2021 with reference to the application of the provisions of Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation, selecting those companies that have not provided any information regarding the share of economic activities eligible and ineligible for the Taxonomy in the context of the three indicators envisaged by the aforementioned article, which receives its first application starting from the 2021 non-financial declarations;
7. to select further non-financial declarations on the basis of a potential risk indicator calculated taking into account the following factors: 1. information on the climatic risk of the economic sector of operation deriving from studies and research on the subject by the European Central Bank; 2. useful elements, from external sources, which summarize the degree of sustainability of the company, in the three dimensions of environmental, social and governance ("ESG"); 3. indicative elements of possible greenwashing behaviour, taking into account the relevance assumed by ESG factors when raising capital; 4. historical experience of the company in the preparation and publication of non-financial statements, based on the lists published by the Institute; 5. relevance of the impact of any lack of information taking into account the type of company, its possible recourse to the risk capital market, the mandatory or voluntary nature of the published declaration.

Also in this case Consob has determined that the criterion for random selection is the extraction of a certain number of subjects, net of the companies identified on the basis of the aforementioned criteria, through a procedure of random generation of repeatable numbers.