The publication of the German and the English version of the revised ZNU Standard - driving sustainable change is planned until the end of 2023.

The biggest content changes are planned in the following areas: Early detection (double materiality) / Climate action (addition of scope 3 elements) / Climate change adaptation (as an additional requirement) / Content additions to packaging, biodiversity and human rights requirements / Finance as a new requirement.

For all people who want to make their organizations (companies, public institutions, associations...) more sustainable and rely on a holistic management system.

As has been shown in recent years, the ZNU Standard - driving sustainable change is suitable for small, medium and large companies - regardless of their industry.

Yes. We are currently working on solutions here with certifiers and pilot companies so that micro-enterprises are not excluded, but rather can develop their contribution to the transformation in a targeted and verifiable way using the ZNU approach.

Yes, the first companies are using the standard abroad, although our initial focus is on the D,A,CH region. With the English version "ZNU Standard - driving sustainable change", the international version has also been available since 2018, which can also be compared with other standards in the ITC Standards Map (https://www.standardsmap.org/en/home).

The ZNU Standard - driving sustainable change supports and prepares for this. In the course of a second stakeholder dialog round in the first half of 2023, the relationship to the regulations will be reviewed and adjusted if necessary (e.g. integration of mandatory KPIs in the ZNU Standard). Concrete guidelines and comparisons with key international regulations, in particular reporting, are already available and are updated on an ongoing basis.

Since the integrative character is very important to us, there is an effort reduction in the audit depending on the certificate. You can view the existing credits here. Additional credits (e.g. for ecovadis) are planned.

This depends on the feedback on content and the possibilities of innovative audit forms and will be decided in the first half of 2023. A regulation for micro-enterprises is being considered in order to make the ZNU standard even more attractive for this target group.

The term of the certificates is usually 3 years. All valid certificates according to the 2018 version will retain their validity. I.e. when the new version is published in October2023 , certificates according to the current 2018 version will still be valid until September 2026.

Every new as well as already certified company is free to perform their audits according to the new version as of the publication of the revision version.

After one year after the introduction of the new version, all certification and recertification audits must be performed according to the new version 2023.

The auditing process follows the requirements of the DAkkS and is based on the ISEAL specifications for the development of sustainability management systems (https://www.isealalliance.org/defining-credible-practice/iseal-codes-good-practice).