Recital 27

(27)Credit institutions and insurance undertakings play a key role in the transition towards a fully sustainable and inclusive economic and financial system in line with the Green Deal. They can have significant positive and negative impacts via their lending, investment and underwriting activities. Credit institutions and insurance undertakings other than those that are required to comply with Directive 2013/34/EU, including cooperatives and mutual undertakings, should therefore be subject to sustainability reporting requirements, provided that they meet certain size criteria. Users of sustainability information would thus be enabled to assess both the impacts of such credit institutions and insurance undertakings on society and the environment and the risks arising from sustainability matters that such credit institutions and insurance undertakings could face. Directive 2013/34/EU provides for three possible criteria to determine whether an undertaking is to be considered a ‘large undertaking’, namely the balance sheet total, net turnover and the average number of employees during the financial year. The criterion of net turnover needs to be adapted for credit institutions and for insurance undertakings by referring to the definition of net turnover in Council Directives 86/635/EEC ¹⁹ and 91/674/EEC ²⁰ instead of the general definition laid down in Directive 2013/34/EU. To ensure coherence with the reporting requirements of Directive 86/635/EEC, Member States should be able to choose not to apply sustainability reporting requirements to credit institutions listed in Article 2(5) of Directive 2013/36/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council ²¹ .