Recital 20

(20)This Directive leaves it to Member States to decide how to gather the necessary information about groups of companies and about the average number of employees of a company. In order to avoid imposing new requirements on companies, registers could extract such data directly from information that companies include in their financial statements filed with the register. The requirement to disclose information about the average number of employees should therefore be conditional upon that information being available in a format which allows the extraction of data. Moreover, given the requirements related to structured data and machine-readable and searchable formats under Union legal acts such as Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815 ⁹ , Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138 ¹⁰ , and Directive (EU) 2017/1132, the registers should also be able to extract information about groups of companies by automated means. To ensure that the requirements related to machine readability are fully implemented in all Member States and that registers have the technical means to process company information in a machine-readable and searchable format or as structured data, it is necessary to provide for a longer transposition period for the provisions requiring information about groups of companies and information about the average number of employees of a company to be made available through the system of interconnection of registers.