European Union Further Refines Its Sustainable Investment Regulations
What are the new requirements?
Ezra Zahabi, partner with Akin Gump’s London office, discusses the state of ESG investing in Europe, including the latest EU regulations, how the new laws will effect the post-Brexit UK, and where she sees ESG investing going in the future.
There are two new European regulations that are specifically focused on ESG investing. These complement and build on other ESG focused requirements, including the 2019 revised Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD), which requires investment managers and certain institutional investors to publicly report on their shareholder engage-
CCBJ: Please share some background about what led up to the new regulations around environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing in the EU
ment and voting behavior. The two new regulations are the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and the Taxonomy Regulation. The SFDR basically intro-
and when they will come into effect.
duces a new regime of disclosures around ESG issues for
Ezra Zahabi: The background for the new rules in the EU
ticipants.” That includes occupational pension schemes,
comes from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is an international framework for dealing with climate change. More recently the Paris Agreement committed the signatories to using their best efforts to further the objectives of keeping a global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Those two big international conventions have given rise to more specific initiatives, including the EU’s Sustainable
investment managers and other “financial market parinvestment advisors, and other kinds of institutional investors and asset managers. Investment managers and other institutional investors will be required to disclose information about how they approach ESG in their investment process. Investment managers will need to publish statements describing their approach to ESG and how they incorporate sustainability risks in their investment process. Flowing from that dis-
Finance Action Plan and the European Green Deal.
closure, other disclosure requirements will provide fur-
These initiatives seek to transition the European economy
of those requirements apply on a “comply or explain”
to a more resource-efficient and sustainable economic model and to build a financial system that is capable of supporting sustainable growth. One of the key elements of these initiatives is finding mechanisms within the financial markets to organically guide capital flows to more sustainable sectors and to change market behavior through drivers like investor pressure. A cornerstone to the successful redirection of capital flows is transparency, so the new ESG disclosure requirements form one of the key steps toward achieving that recalibration. 36
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ther information on the manager’s ESG approach. Many basis. So the focus of the ESG disclosure requirements is really to get large investors to show how they approach ESG issues and how they integrate sustainability risks into their investment decision-making processes. Once they’ve described that, they then have to decide whether to comply or explain in further disclosures. In contrast to some existing disclosures, these disclosures are likely to be relatively granular, which is necessary for the disclosure to be meaningful, so in practice the disclosure will need to be relevant to the specific asset class and market.
