Explaining the Sustainability Reporting Implementation Gap in an EU Candidate Country: Evidence from Albania

The implementation of sustainability reporting has become one of the principal challenges accompanying the transition towards more transparent and accountable corporate reporting within the European Union. Although the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) establish a comprehensive regulatory framework, considerably less attention has been devoted to explaining why implementation gaps emerge despite progressive regulatory convergence, particularly within EU candidate countries. This study examines implementation readiness for sustainability reporting in Albania using a mixed-method research design that combines documentary analysis of the reporting practices of the country’s 200 largest companies with survey evidence collected from 127 certified accounting professionals. The study investigates how regulatory readiness, corporate readiness and professional readiness interact to shape implementation capacity during the transition towards European sustainability reporting requirements. The findings demonstrate that although Albania has made significant progress in aligning its regulatory framework with European sustainability reporting developments, implementation capacity remains at an early stage of development. Corporate sustainability disclosures remain fragmented and largely inconsistent with ESRS principles, while most accounting professionals report requiring additional technical preparation before sustainability reporting can be implemented effectively. The evidence suggests that implementation readiness should be understood as a multidimensional process in which regulatory readiness, corporate readiness and professional readiness evolve at different rates, creating an implementation gap between legislative convergence and reporting practice. The study contributes to the sustainability reporting literature by proposing an Implementation Readiness Framework, which positions implementation capacity as the principal explanatory construct linking regulatory reform to reporting quality. In addition, the study provides new empirical evidence from an EU candidate country and offers a transferable analytical perspective that may support future comparative research across emerging institutional environments.