Speakers
Objectives of the session
The European Union has started to develop an extensive regulatory framework to achieve a transparent sustainability reporting. This should support better channelling investment towards a sustainable economy.
The Sustainable Financial Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), implemented since 2021, lays down sustainability disclosure obligations for financial investors, product manufacturers and advisers.
The Taxonomy regulation, which will in part amends the SFDR, aims to progressively give a list of activities considered as positive for 6 environmental objectives without doing significant harm to other ones. Gas and nuclear energy have been included at some conditions in this climate taxonomy.
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which has been agreed by the European Parliament and the Council, will require large companies to publish regular reports on the environmental and social impact of their activities. Subsequent EU sustainable reporting standards should be shortly adopted by the European Commission based on a proposal from EFRAG.
The EU financial sector has been supportive of this regulatory effort, notably to fight existing sustainability confusion and greenwashing.
But these regulations also raised debates and criticisms notably due to their complexity, their interplay, the lack of data, the administrative burden they entail, the way to involve SMEs, level-playing field challenges with other jurisdictions … The need for an effective coordination between ISSB’s and EFRAG’s was also underlined.
In this context, the roundtable will focus on assessing the implementation of these frameworks which is ongoing, as well as on the possible sources of progress.
Points of discussion
- What is the specific role of each of the transparency regulations (SFDR/CSRD/Taxonomy)?
- What are the main lessons learned from the beginning phase on their implementation and on horizontal issues? What are the possible regulatory improvements?