ASCG Survey on the state of implementation of the EU Taxonomy Regulation: A beginning has been made; timely reporting remains unclear at this stage

The EU Taxonomy Regulation adopted in mid-2020 will result in new reporting requirements for certain companies from January 2022 onwards. ASCG has conducted a survey among the DAX30 companies on the state of implementation activities in this regard. Based on a high response rate of 90 percent, ASCG has published the results in a brief report (available in German) today. The main findings are as follows:

• Almost all DAX30 companies are currently engaged in implementation, but with varying degrees of progress.
• The determination of taxonomy-eligible and taxonomy-aligned economic activities is currently pursued by more than 50 percent of the companies surveyed in the form of an active project. Other companies are still in the planning phase.
• A small portion of companies said they have not yet started with implementation. Few companies have already completed some aspects of the implementation.
• Only half of companies surveyed currently firmly believe that they will be able to meet the reporting deadline by early 2022. Some of the biggest challenges are data availability due to complex reporting requirements and the allocation of their business portfolios to NACE activities.

ASCG President Georg Lanfermann thanked the many companies that took part in the survey and commented on the results as follows: “The results of the ASCG survey on the state of implementation confirm the high complexity of the EU taxonomy regulation and its required reporting by companies. The continuing high dynamism with which the topic of sustainable finance is being driven by Brussels poses high practical hurdles for many German companies. This is particularly evident for the reporting of data on the EU taxonomy. At ASCG, we see here a good opportunity to support German companies with our work. The high level of interest already expressed in the ASCG User Forum on the Taxonomy Regulation, which starts this week, confirms our approach.“