Transition finance for SMEs: report by the Platform on Sustainable Finance

On 21 March 2025, the Platform on Sustainable Finance issued a report ‘Streamlining sustainable finance for SMEs’, which includes recommendations for a voluntary standard for financing the transition to environmental sustainability of SMEs. The platform is hosting a public webinar on 27 March 2025 at 4:00 p.m. to explain the report’s recommendations. Registrations are possible under the link above.

The voluntary ‘SME Sustainable Finance Standard’ is intended to be used by financial undertakings to classify loans or other forms of financing to SMEs as sustainable (green or transition) financing. The objective is to provide SMEs with a framework that helps them to demonstrate their climate-related transition efforts through reporting and thereby gain easier access to capital for these efforts.

The voluntary standard will initially focus on climate-related objectives and is expected to be extended to include other environmental objectives in the future. It takes into account the EFRAG’s preliminary work on the VSME and reporting under the Taxonomy Regulation, but not yet the European Commission’s Omnibus 1 proposal to simplify sustainability reporting (see ASCG Briefing Paper).