EU Action Plan: Financing Sustainable Growth announced

The European Commission published on 8 March 2018 its Action Plan: Financing Sustainable Growth. Therein, the Commission sets out actions to build a sustainable finance strategy for the EU. These actions are mainly based on the recommendations in the final report of the High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. Besides general actions (e.g. establishing a sustainable taxonomy) and specific actions for financial intermediaries (e.g. integrate sustainability considerations in the investment decision-making process) actions regarding the financial reporting are mentioned. Regarding financial reporting it is explained that

• the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure will be included in the Guidelines on non-financial information, which relate to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive,
• EFRAG will be ask to explore potential alternative accounting treatments to fair value measurement for long-term investment portfolios of equity instruments, the endorsement criteria will be expand for an assessment of the impact of new IFRS on sustainable finance,
• a Fitness Check on public reporting by companies is launched.

As part of the fitness check the Commission will explore how IFRS could be amended before the standards are endorsed. The ASCG rejects this idea as explained in its feedback to the roadmap for the fitness check (we reported).

A conference is held on 22 March 2018 in Brussels to discuss the Action Plan.