Creating transparency
We have been reporting on our corporate responsibility (CR) activities for more than 20 years: on our website, 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 in accordance with § 315c in conjunction with § 289c to 289e HGB. In selecting the issues to be presented in the 2022 NFS, we took the statutory requirements into account. In addition, since the 2021 reporting year, we have fulfilled the obligatory reporting requirements regarding 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 net revenue and also of our capital expenditure and operating expenditure for climate-related environmental objectives, for which criteria already exist in EU legislation, is taxonomy-eligible or taxonomy-aligned. The requirements for transparency in corporate sustainability are constantly increasing. To meet these requirements, we have followed the Global Reporting Initiative (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 on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). We also addressed the coming requirements of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in the reporting year, so that we can prepare our reporting for this in good time. 
We publish detailed information on this in our 2022 CR Report.
The Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom AG is responsible for the review of the content of the NFS. It did this with the support of Deloitte GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (external auditor) in the form of a limited assurance engagement. The two non-financial performance indicators “energy consumption” and “CO2 emissions” (Scope 1 and 2) 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 is 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. The NFS is used by CR experts as an aid to rating Deutsche Telekom’s sustainability performance. At the same time, we aim to engage stakeholders in our sustainability topics. For this reason, we have supplemented the CR report with interactive sustainability stories, serving the growing interest among the general public in sustainability issues. Some of the stories are also available in simplified German.
During the reporting year, our 2020 CR Report was awarded first place in the independent cross-industry company ranking of the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) and the future e.V. business initiative. We also attained second place for best sustainability communication in the NetFederation CSR benchmark ranking.