Risky Business: It is considered sustainable, right? : Examining the EU Taxonomy and its implications of legally classifying what economic activities are sustainable

Sammanfattning

The EU Taxonomy Regulation[1] (“EU Taxonomy”) is a relatively new classification system for determining what economic activities are considered sustainable. By creating a common language between investors, issuers, and policymakers, the regulation aims to increase transparency and help investors assess whether investments meet robust environmental standards. This thesis aims to investigate how the EU Taxonomy, as a legal instrument, aims to serve its legislative objective and secondly identify potential challenges of the regulation. Findings indicate that the regulation can create an adequate commonly held classification system as long as the technical criteria for each sector keep up with new scientific discoveries and technological advancements. A regulation to develop uniform understanding across the EU and delegated acts to amend the legislation seems like the most appropriate legal instrument. Areas for improvement concern revising the scope of whom it applies, and this process has begun with the proposal of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Other areas for improvement concerns the political nature of what sectors should be included in the taxonomy, for instance, whether nuclear energy and gas should be deemed sustainable or not. The taxonomy may strive to be a neutral classification system; however, member states’ economic incentives affect what is included. Finally, this thesis concludes that it is too early to predict the taxonomy’s breakthrough. In theory, it is a significant idea. Still, we can only know with time whether we have reached a more common understanding, transparency and eventually have facilitated a transition through this regulation. [1] Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 June 2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment and amending regulation (EU) 2019/288.