EU Commission launches public consultation on criteria defining environmentally sustainable activities (Deadline: 18 Dec)
The Taxonomy Regulation tasks the Commission with establishing the actual list of environmentally sustainable activities by defining technical screening criteria for each environmental objective. These criteria will be established through delegated acts.
The TEG’s recommendations are designed to support the European Commission in the development of the delegated act on climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation under the Taxonomy Regulation.
The Commission services are currently preparing the delegated act, taking into account the requirements of the Taxonomy Regulation and the stakeholder feedback received on the TEG reports and on the inception impact assessment. The delegated act will be accompanied by an impact assessment and is currently subject to stakeholder feedback for a period of four weeks before adoption.
For the four other environmental objectives, the taxonomy should be established by the end of 2021 and will apply by the end of 2022. Further development of the EU taxonomy will take place via a new Platform on sustainable finance, which is expected to be operating by autumn 2020. The first company reports and investor disclosures using the EU Taxonomy are due at the start of 2022.
The Commission will adopt a delegated act by June 2021 specifying the information companies subject to the non-financial reporting directive will have to disclose on how, and to what extent, their activities align with those considered environmentally sustainable in the Taxonomy. An inception impact assessment was published for feedback in July 2020. To help inform the delegated act, the Commission also requested advice from the European Supervisory Authorities in September 2020.