On June 3 in partnership with PRI (Principles for Responsible Investments), Martin Spolc, Head of Unit, Sustainable Finance at the European Commission provided updates on the Commission’s ongoing sustainable finance work programme and discussions on aligning the EU recovery programme with the principles of the Green Deal.
The goal of the renewed sustainable finance strategy is to green the financial sector, to strengthen resilience as well as to ensure that environmental and social interests are fully embedded into business strategies.
Here are the main future actions that the European Commission will take:
- A new delegated act will soon be published to support benchmark regulation (climate benchmark & climate transition benchmarks);
- A call for application will be launched to join the platform for sustainable finances which will start in September;
- The new strategy will be announced in November /December 2020;
- The NFRD will be reviewed next year during the first quarter.
The objective of this revision :
- To increase the ambition. The current achievements are not enough;
- So far, the objective was to green the financial sector – Now, the emphasis is to make sure that the financial sector will support the businesses through the transition path;
- To mobilize citizens and public authorities ;
- To strentghen resilience.
In addition, the
EC wants to move faster on the social dimension of sustainability.
Last week, the EC made it clear that the recovery phase needs to be consistent
with the Green Deal. The EC made it clear that no trade-off will hapen.
Taxonomy should guide investments for the recovery.
As part of the EU
recovery package adopted on 27 May 2020, there are :
- The new initiative on sustainable CG to ensure environmental and social interests are fully embedded into business strategies,
- EU sustainable finance taxonomy and renewed strategy, green investment guidelines