The EU Taxonomy Regulation – the establishment of an EU classification system for sustainable activities - was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on the 22 June 2020 and entered into force on 12 July 2020. As a reminder, is a tool to help investors, companies, issuers and project promoters navigate the transition to a low-carbon, resilient and resource-efficient economy. The Taxonomy sets a general framework, including performance thresholds that will help companies, project promoters and issuers access green financing to improve their environmental performance, as well as helping to identify which activities are already eco-friendly.
The following step on this topic is the drawing up of the actual list of environmentally sustainable activities by defining technical screening criteria for each environmental objective, the so-called delegated acts. The Commission services are currently preparing the act, by taking into account the requirements of the Taxonomy and the stakeholder feedback received on the Technical Expert Group reports and on the inception impact assessment. The delegated act will be subject to participant’s feedback for a period of four weeks.
Please note that the taxonomy will be published in two batches: one on the climate-related objectives and one on the other four environmental objectives (Sustainable Use and Protection of Water and Marine Resources, Transition to a Circular Economy, Pollution Prevention and Control and Protection and Restoration of Biodiversity and Ecosystems). This means that Member States and the European Union, as well as on financial market participants and on undertakings will only start applying these rules when the relevant delegated acts have been public for one year. This has been decided to ensure that market actors have had sufficient time to familiarise themselves with the criteria.
The taxonomy for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation should be established by the end of 2020, in order to ensure its full application by end of 2021.
Source n°1: here
Source n°2: here