Finance Watch welcomes the European Commission’s consultation and recognizes the complexity of defining priority sectors for identifying eligible activities according to the four remaining taxonomy objectives, due to:
- The diversity of objectives and the need to aggregate multiple non-comparable factors to reach a list of priority sectors and economic activities.
- The difficulty of obtaining data on the entire value chain and not just on activities, in particular to assess the potential for improvement of sectors.
In its response, Finance Watch still shared concerns that the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors – which are arguably the most important from the perspective of environmental objectives being consulted on – are not yet included in the eligible activities. This is despite the fact that the report of the Platform on Sustainable Finance of March 2022 included these sectors. Today, it seems contradictory that activities related to sustainable agriculture, aiming at protecting biodiversity and reducing water and soil pollution, cannot be considered environmentally sustainable while a company engaged in air transport ground handling could argue being taxonomy aligned (subject to compliance with TSCs).
Therefore, Finance Watch urges the Commission to accelerate the assessment and calibration of criteria for activities related to agriculture, forestry, livestock, or fisheries in order to be able to bring into force the complementary delegated acts at the same time as the draft delegated act and annexes which are subject to this consultation.
