European Commission

Europe’s long-awaited Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation is finally coming up for a vote this coming Thursday at the European Parliament’s meeting in Strasbourg. Players in the crypto industry around the world and in Luxembourg, from cryptocurrency to NFT providers are closely parsing the text that will be voted on. 

The European Commission plans to stick to its plan to stop inducements for financial advisors, a proposal it recognises as “divisive” but one that is needed to build trust among investing consumers. “I think it’s good to grasp this nettle and to make change for the better,” said EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness.

As fund managers and investors across the 27 countries in the European Union continue to question the union’s approach to its sustainable finance framework, Brussels has made clear it will take its time before addressing growing confusion over greenwashing. “Greenwashing remains to be defined at the EU level.”

From 2 August 2022, a European Commission regulation comes into force (Commission Delegated Regulation 2021/1253 of 12 April 2021) as part of MiFiD II that requires providers of investment advisory and discretionary portfolio management services to collect specific information on their clients sustainability preferences. 

The providers are also required to “meet such preferences”, while at the same time meeting their investment objectives and taking into account their financial situation and experience.

It’s been nearly a decade since the European Commission set out its ambitious plans for a Capital Markets Union (CMU), diversifying sources of funding in Europe’s economy. Progress so far has been slow and Brussels now has conceded it needs help to persuade member states and its citizens of its merits before it can make another push

As the financial industry continues to call for more clarity and guidance to handle what even supervisors see as the “astonishing” complexity of the emerging EU framework for sustainable finance, impact investments and ESG, European regulators have added a range of technical details to sustainability rules over recent weeks. 

A comprehensive review by the European Commission has the potential to put the European long-term investment funds (Eltif) regime back on track and set it up for the kind of success Ucits funds have experienced. Eltifs can become competitive with AIFs by removing many factors that made Eltif take-up much lower than had initially been hoped. The investment community has been broadly supportive of the reset.

The EU braces for a legal battle over plans to label nuclear energy and gas as sustainable transition fuels. Luxembourg and Austria are preparing steps to have the proposed delegated act annulled.

Unshell – the name given to the third anti tax-avoidance directive (ATAD III) – would have a “huge impact for Luxembourg, especially for Luxembourg” said Carlo Fassbinder, tax director at the Luxembourg finance ministry.

On the last day of the year, the European Commission secretly circulated a plan to classify the fossil fuel natural gas and nuclear power as ‘sustainable’ investments. It seems the Commission will not publicly consult on this plan - the second chapter of the EU ‘taxonomy’ - while it did so three times for the first chapter, which dealt with renewable energy.