This thesis examines the broader impact of the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) on SMEs, including effects not reflected by formal reporting obligations. It analyzes sustainability transparency as a framework structured by legal design, market-based information demands and organizational capacity. The thesis demonstrates that CSRD-related effects on SMEs are not determined by formal scope alone, but arise through exposure pathways that generate unequally distributed burdens and opportunities across firms.
Based on legal-doctrinal analysis, academic and policy literature and illustrative case studies of listed and non-listed SMEs, the study illustrates that sustainability transparency produces cumulative pressures linked to CSRD complexity, data availability, assurance readiness, and value-chain information requests. At the same time, reporting capacity may stabilize market participation and reduce informational frictions, but its effects remain largely risk-limiting and do not lead to systematic upgrading. The thesis concludes that proportionality under the CSRD depends on the coordination of sustainability information flows across legal, market and organizational interfaces.