Over the last few years, the focus of public attention has shifted increasingly to the issues of climate change, environmental protection and nature conservation. This development obviously also affects the economic and financial sector: environmental and social considerations, subsumed under the main term “Sustainable Finance”, are increasingly gaining ground in investment decisions.
This GSK Update highlights the current developments in the field of Sustainable Finance at European and national level (Germany + Luxembourg) and focuses in particular on the EU Commission’s “Action Plan on Sustainable Finance”.
The EU Commission thus pursues a long-term strategy, aimed at increasing the sustainability, efficiency and resilience of economic and financial markets. In this context, the Commission considers the following measures, inter alia, to be required:
- Implementing a harmonized EU classification system for sustainable economic activities (so-called EU Taxonomy Regulation),
- Enhancing transparency (and advisory competence) for investors with regard to the so-called ESG factors (economic, social and governance factors), as well as
- Defining “CO2 benchmarks”.
The target group of the Action Plan is quite extensive, including banks, investment firms, insurance companies, AIFMs, UCITS management companies, etc. The GSK Update also points out that not only the financial sector will be affected by the measures, but in particular (indirectly) also the real estate sector.
