On Wednesday 3 June, the shadow rapporteurs of the European Parliament’s main political groups broadly welcomed the draft report by Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (Renew Europe, Dutch) on the revision of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (‘SFDR’), but differed on the criteria for sustainable and transitional financial products.
The project, presented at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), aims to simplify a regulatory framework that is considered too complicated, to reduce the risks of greenwashing and to improve the clarity of products for retail investors (see EUROPE 13865/9).
The main debate focused on the future ‘Transition’ category (see EUROPE 13865/9), which Luděk Niedermayer (EPP, Czech) considered to be one of the main subjects for future negotiations.
The Social Democrats and the Greens/EFA called for stricter criteria to limit the risk of greenwashing. “A sustainable investment product that is going into fossil fuel is a contradiction in terms”, argued Kira Marie Peter-Hansen (Greens/EFA, Danish) in a speech read on her behalf.
The groups on the right of the chamber defended a more flexible approach. Carlo Fidanza (ECR, Italian) criticised an overly “ideological” vision of sustainable finance and called for greater consideration to be given to natural gas, nuclear power and sovereign debt, while Nikola Bartůšek (PfE, Czech) supported further easing of disclosure requirements and targeted exemptions for certain professional investors.
Amendments to Mr Gerbrandy’s text had to be tabled by noon on Thursday. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)