With many stakeholders welcoming the European Commission's action plan on sustainable finance (see EUROPE 11977), it appears to be a subject on which everyone can agree at the European Parliament as well.
“It would seem that there is political agreement between the groups, we have managed to put our disagreements aside”, said MEP Molly Scott Cato (Greens/EFA, UK), during the examination of the amendments tabled to her own-initiative report (see EUROPE 11966) at Parliament's committee on economic and monetary affairs, on Monday 26 March.
The MEPs want the Commission's forthcoming proposals to lay down truly green standards, not only to encourage investors to turn to more sustainable investments, but also to discourage them from continuing to invest in non-sustainable finance.
In so doing, the rapporteur calls upon the European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank to lead by example. “If our own institutions invest in unsustainable assets, we cannot encourage others to invest in sustainable ones”, she said.
The MEPs also seem to have agreed to ask the Commission to adopt a regulatory strategy aiming to measure risks in terms of sustainability in the framework of the rules on capital requirements, stressing that these rules must be based on proven risks and fully reflect them.
In particular, the rapporteur proposed to launch a European pilot scheme during the next financial year, with a view to starting to put together methodological benchmarks.
The EPP group suggested inviting the European Banking Authority to carry out an investigation in coordination with the Commission's high-level expert group on sustainable finance, to determine whether specific prudential treatment for green assets, in the form of different equity requirements from other assets, would be justified.
“Market distortion mechanisms should not serve as an incentive to take misplaced risks, particularly if we hope to avoid creating speculative bubbles in the future”, said Brian Hayes (EPP, Ireland).
This own-initiative report, which “sets Parliament's political course”, is to be voted on at the end of April, just ahead of the Commission's first specific proposals, to be presented in May. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)