For the first time, Greece was included this year in the Euronext Sustainability Week, with Athens hosting on Wednesday, September 16 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center the flagship event of the organization.
The fourth Sustainability Week is being held under the central theme “Building resilience in a changing world” and includes 37 events in 11 countries, with more than 3,200 participants from the fields of markets, business, investment, and regulation.
Stéphane Boujnah on the “new ESG”
Stéphane Boujnah, CEO and chairman of the Managing Board of Euronext, set the tone of the event, describing the shift in the discussion around sustainability. As he emphasized, ESG is no longer limited to the environmental dimension and compliance, but is increasingly linked to value creation, resilience, and competitiveness.
In this context, he referred to Euronext’s “New ESG,” namely Energy, Security and Geostrategy, with energy security, geostrategy, and strategic autonomy now being incorporated into planning for the resilience of the European economy.
The head of Euronext also focused on initiatives concerning the Greek market. Euronext announced two new indices, the Euronext Athens ESG Index and the Euronext Athens ESG Tilted Index, which are being developed using Sustainalytics data. This is a different initiative from the existing ATHEX ESG Index, which has been operating since 2021.
At the same time, following the transition of the Greek capital market to the Optiq platform in June 2027, Euronext Athens-listed companies will gain access to My ESG Profile, so that they can present their sustainability performance to investors in a standardized way. The Euronext Trading Game is also being expanded in Greece, with the new edition starting on October 5, as part of the effort to strengthen financial literacy.
What the EY CSRD Barometer 2026 shows
A distinct part of the event was the presentation of the EY CSRD Barometer 2026 by Spyridoula Stamatopoulou, Director, Climate Change and Sustainability Services at EY. The study is based on 196 sustainability statements for the 2025 financial year and records the picture of the second year of implementation of the CSRD/ESRS requirements.
The data show that reports are becoming shorter and more structured, with their average length decreasing by 11 pages. 98% of sustainability statements received at least limited assurance, while 84.7% of companies stated that they have a climate transition plan. However, 24.1% of the companies that had a transition plan did not disclose a net zero target. EY overall confirms that limited assurance has now become an almost universal practice and that 166 out of the 196 companies have a climate transition plan.
Among the issues most frequently identified as material, the workforce dominates at 100%, climate change at 99.5%, and business conduct at 97.4%.
EY’s overall conclusions also record a reduction and greater grouping of impacts, risks and opportunities, while assurance now appears as an established practice.
The panels of the event
The discussion during the event moved across different aspects of sustainability, from energy security and resilience to the new regulatory environment and the way ESG criteria now affect investment decisions.
In the panel “From sustainability to resilience,” Elena Athousaki of Motor Oil, Konstantinos Diamantouros of SEV, and Petros Varelidis from the Ministry of Environment and Energy discussed the challenges created by climate pressures, energy security, and the need to strengthen strategic autonomy.
The agenda then moved on, after the EY survey was first presented, to changes in the regulatory framework for sustainability and their implications for businesses, with the participation of Achilleas Ioakeimidis of PPC, Alexandros Katsiaboulas of Titan, Antonis Mountouris of HELLENiQ Energy, and Spyridoula Stamatopoulou of EY.
This was followed by the section on sustainable investing, where interest turned to the transition from measuring ESG performance to capital allocation and stewardship, with Federica Rampinini of PRI and executives from S&P Global Sustainable, ResNovae/ESGenius!, Alpha Bank, and Growthfund.
The panel program concluded with the CEOs panel, in which Christian Hadjimina of Theon International, Ioannis Karabelas of ADMIE Holdings, and Aris Karytinos of Prodea Investments participated, while the event “curtain” “fell” with the address by the CEO of Euronext Athens, Giannos Kontopoulos.