The Commission published a call for public feedback on the content, methodology and presentation of information that large financial and non-financial undertakings should disclose concerning their environmentally sustainable economic activities. The Commission has recently adopted an EU taxonomy – a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities aimed at enabling the scale up of sustainable investment. The Taxonomy Regulation requires those undertakings to report how and to what extent their activities qualify as environmentally sustainable. In particular, non-financial undertakings will have to disclose the share of their turnover, capital, and operational expenditure resulting from environmentally sustainable economic activities.
Financial undertakings will have to disclose to what extent they finance, or invest, in environmentally sustainable economic activities. Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation aims to increase transparency in the market, and prevent greenwashing by providing information to investors about the environmental (Taxonomy) alignment of economic activities of financial and non-financial undertakings. This disclosure will provide investors with uniform and transparent information about the environmental performance of the companies and assets they finance. It will also help investors and the public to understand the companies’ trajectory towards environmental sustainability.
Mairead McGuinness, Commissioner for Financial Services, Financial Stability and Capital Markets Union, said: “The EU’s Taxonomy Regulation is central to the European Green Deal. The draft rules published today aim at further strengthening and streamlining the EU Taxonomy Regulation transparency rules concerning the environmental performance of companies. They will be instrumental in directing investment to green and sustainable projects. By contributing to this call, you can have your say on the development of these rules.”
The call, which takes the form of a draft Delegated Act, will be subject to public feedback for three consecutive weeks. The full text is available online. For more information, please see the Questions & Answers document.
