EUROPE: EU Sustainable Finance and Non-Financial Reporting

On 23^rd June 2020, the Irish Funds Industry Association announced the publication of a paper on EU sustainable finance and non-financial reporting stating that central to compliance with the newly emerging EU sustainable finance framework is the need to improve ESG disclosures, also referred to as “non-financial information”. The European Commission is currently reviewing the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) in order to update this framework to meet evolving needs. Irish Funds has published a comment paper entitled “Building a common EU framework for corporate non-financial reporting disclosures”.

In the paper, the association agree with and support the objective of providing meaningful, consistent, high quality ESG-related reporting from corporates. The paper specifically addresses the key areas of:

• Transparency and access to data and information
• Standardisation
• Materiality
• Third-party assurance
• Location of NFRD disclosures

The publication of this paper follows their response the Commission’s consultation on the review of the NFRD.

FCA will shortly publish a further paper comparing some of the prevalent international non-financial reporting frameworks.