Creating transparency
We have been transparently reporting on our corporate responsibility (CR) activities for more than 20 years: on our website, in the We Care magazine, in our CR report, and in our Annual Report. Since the 2016 financial year, we have also explained how our core business contributes to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have been set as part of the 2030 Agenda.
For further information, please refer to the section “Sustainable Development Goals.”
Since the 2017 reporting year, we have published a non-financial statement (NFS) as part of the management report pursuant to the CSR Directive Implementation Act and in accordance with § 315c in conjunction with § 289c to 289e HGB. In selecting the content for the 2021 NFS, we took both the statutory requirements and the results of our materiality analysis into account. 
The concepts in this NFS are described on the basis of our long-standing CR reporting and in line with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. In addition, as of the 2021 reporting year, we fulfill the obligatory reporting requirements for environmentally sustainable economic activities in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council of June 18, 2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment, and amending Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 (hereinafter EU taxonomy): In the section “Aspect 1: Environmental concerns” we provide a breakdown of what percentage of our turnover and also of our capital expenditure and operating expenditure for climate-related environmental objectives is taxonomy-eligible (where criteria already exist in our industry for this). The requirements for transparency in corporate sustainability are constantly increasing. To meet these requirements, we have followed the GRI standards for the concepts and the materiality analysis in this NFS, and our CR reporting additionally reflects other voluntary frameworks such as those of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
Detailed information on this will be published in our 2021 CR report.
The Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom AG is responsible for the review of the content of the NFS. In the reporting year, it did this with the support of PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (external auditor) in the form of a limited assurance engagement. The two non-financial performance indicators “energy consumption” and “CO2 emissions” are included as management-related performance indicators in the reasonable assurance engagement on Deutsche Telekom’s consolidated financial statements and the combined management report. The NFS engagement was based on the International Standard on Assurance Engagements ISAE 3000 (revised). Unless otherwise stated, all disclosures in this NFS apply in equal measure to the Group and the parent company (combined non-financial statement). To avoid repetition within the management report, we refer to further information provided in other sections wherever relevant. References to disclosures not contained in the combined management report are provided as background information; these disclosures are not part of the NFS and thus are not covered by the engagement.
Our annual CR report supplements this NFS, meeting in full the requirements from a range of different stakeholders for substantiated accountability. CR experts will find everything in the report that they need to analyze Deutsche Telekom’s sustainability performance. At the same time, the report aims to engage stakeholders in our sustainability topics. We therefore expanded the CR report in the reporting year to include interactive sustainability stories, serving the growing interest among the general public in sustainability issues. Some of the stories are also available in simplified German.
We were ranked best in class for sustainability communication in the NetFederation’s CSR Benchmark in the reporting year. We also achieved first place in the ESG Reporting Awards 2021 in the category Best Sustainability Reporting: Technology & Telecoms. Our 2020 CR report received gold both at the German Online Communications Award in the CSR & Annual Report category, and at the 2021 PR Report Award in the category Sustainability and CSR.