Compliance with GRI standards

Ahold has decided to use the standards developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as the framework to guide our approach to and reporting on CSR.

The GRI is a global, multi-stakeholder network of business people, representatives from labor and civil society, investors, accountants and others, working together to develop an internationally accepted standard for CSR reporting, called the Sustainability Reporting Framework. This provides a universally applicable, comparable framework in which to understand disclosed information about sustainability performance. The vision behind the framework is that reporting on CSR is as routine and comparable as financial reporting.

Ahold is adapting its reporting according to the GRI standards. In the GRI cross-reference table in this report, we provide a summary of our compliance. We are also discussing the implementation of more GRI indicators for the report next year. The GRI framework outlines several levels of reporting compliance, depending on a company's capabilities and ambitions. We are targeting the achievement of the entry level of reporting standards with this year's report.