The EU Taxonomy Regulation¹ has now entered into force – a long awaited milestone in the sustainable finance market. The EU Taxonomy is a classification tool aimed at investors, companies and financial institutions to define environmental performance of economic activities across a wide range of industries, and sets requirements corporate activities must meet to be considered sustainable. The EU Taxonomy is the EU’s answer to the question “what is green?”.

What is the EU Taxonomy?

The EU Taxonomy is a regulatory classification system under which companies may define which of their economic activities are environmentally sustainable. The regulation also mandates certain companies to report on and disclose the extent to which their business activities are aligned with the Taxonomy’s definition of sustainable.

Who does the Taxonomy Regulation apply to?

Any market participant can use the Taxonomy Regulation to classify their economic activities as sustainable. However, reporting under the Taxonomy Regulation will be a mandatory requirement for two key groups: financial market participants offering financial products within the EU and the UK and large public interest companies, i.e. those required to publish a non-financial statement under the Accounting Directive, as amended by the Non-Financial Reporting Directive² (see Fig 1 below).

What must be disclosed?

Financial market participants

For financial market participants offering financial products, where the relevant financial products contribute to one of the six ‘environmental objectives’, the entity must disclose:

1. Details of the environmental objective(s) to which the underlying investment contributes; and
2. A description of the extent to which the underlying investments are in sustainable economic activities. This should specify the share of investments in sustainable economic activities as a percentage of all investments selected in the financial product.

Financial products that do not have sustainable investment objectives must make a negative disclosure statement in pre-contractual and periodic reporting disclosures³.

Bonds are not a specified financial product for the purposes of the Taxonomy Regulation disclosure obligation. However, compliance is recommended for bond issuers in any case since investors and fund managers will need this information when they report on the Taxonomy-alignment of their funds.

Large public interest entities

Large public interest entities⁴ will be required to disclose in non-financial statements whether, and the extent to which, its activities are environmentally sustainable. Specifically, this will describe the proportion of their turnover, capital expenditure and operating expenditure is associated with Taxonomy-defined sustainable economic activities. As with financial market participants, companies with assets and activities that are not sustainable will have to make a negative statement in reference to the relevant assets. This is in addition to the disclosures required by the Non-Financial Reporting Directive.

What are sustainable activities?

Firstly, the activity must substantially contribute to at least one of six environmental objectives set out in the Taxonomy Regulation: climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems. Secondly, the activity must not do any significant harm to the other environmental objectives. Thirdly, the activity must comply with minimum social and governance safeguards. Finally, the activity must comply with certain ‘technical screening criteria’.

[View source.]