Main recommendations from the report on advancing sustainable finance
Published 12 May 2025
Category: Impact and ESG
In our previous update, we touched upon the report on advancing sustainable finance (“Report”) published by the Platform on Sustainable Finance. Overall, the work performed by the Platform on Sustainable Finance has focused on developing technical criteria for new economic activities and reviewing activities included in the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2139 of 4 June 2021 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (“Climate Delegated Act”).
The Report touches on a range of significant points. Below, some of the main recommendations from the Report are highlighted. In general, they must address the stakeholder requests and support the green transition:
- Updating existing technical screening criteria: Technical screening criteria for existing activities should be reviewed to reflect the most recent technologies and science developments as well as to ensure usability and alignment towards climate and environmental goals. Further, such update should also include, among others, improvement of comparability and clarity of the technical screening criteria, definitions of climate change mitigation and adaption and thresholds across different sectors.
- Expansion with new economic activities: The Platform on Sustainable Finance recommends that new economic activities are included in the EU Taxonomy. This includes updating and developing technical screening criteria for economic activities contributing substantially to environmental objectives beyond climate change mitigation and adaption. New activities and sectors shall include, among others, mining of critical raw materials, digital environmental services and nature-based solutions. The purpose is to meet the ambitions raised in the European Green Deal and expand the EU Taxonomy coverage.
- Simplification of reporting requirements under the EU Taxonomy: The Report includes recommends on making reporting and disclosures simpler, less burdensome and more usable. This shall be done by having better guidance tools, data-based thresholds as well as more consistent and clear technical screening criteria.
- Strengthening resilience and adaption: The Platform on Sustainable Finance supports including more economic activities contributing to climate resilience within the EU Taxonomy. This entails developing currently outstanding Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) criteria for adapted activities to enable more companies to classify investments as Taxonomy-aligned.
- Ensuring international applicability and relevance: The Report stresses the need for global relevance by ensuring that criteria are designed in a way that can be interpreted outside of EU and allow international companies to align with the EU Taxonomy if relevant.
Next steps: The Report is the result of a mandate given to the Platform on Sustainable Finance issued by the EU Commission. Although the Report does not obligate the EU Commission to take specific actions, the Report will now be reviewed by the EU Commission and is likely to have some influence on their future work.
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