On 7 May 2021, the European Commission issued a call for public feedback on a draft Delegated Regulation specifying the disclosure obligations under Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation. The Commission has also published FAQs on the draft Delegated Regulation and how will it work in practice.

Under Article 8(1) of the Taxonomy Regulation certain large undertakings that are required to publish non-financial information pursuant to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) (‘relevant undertakings’) shall disclose information to the public on how and to what extent their activities are associated with environmentally sustainable economic  activities. Other companies (e.g. SMEs, non-EU companies) may decide to disclose this information on a voluntary basis for the purpose of getting access to sustainable financing or for other business-related reasons.

Article 8(2) specifies the key performance indicators (KPIs) related to turnover, capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) that non-financial undertakings  must disclose. It does not specify equivalent indicators for financial undertakings, mainly large banks, asset managers, investment firms and insurance/reinsurance undertakings.  Article 8(3) specifies the publishing parameters of reporting both against the Taxonomy Regulation and the NFRD.

Article 8(4) of the Taxonomy Regulation requires the Commission to adopt a delegated act to specify the content, methodology, and presentation of information to be disclosed by both non-financial and financial undertakings by June 2021. The draft Delegated Regulation specifies further the disclosure obligations under Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation.

The deadline for comments on the draft Delegated Regulation is 2 June 2021. The final version of the Delegated Regulation is currently planned for adoption by the end of June 2021. After the scrutiny period of the European Parliament and the Council, the Delegated Regulation should come into application from 1 January 2022.