Patrick de Cambourg

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.”

A new EU law from 2025 will require companies in Europe to accept a future in which their reporting data on sustainability and their ESG impact will be just as important as data on their financial performance. Non-EU companies also will be subject to these requirements. “The landscape is going to change because preparers are going to offer reliable data,” said Patrick de Cambourg, chair of the EU taskforce on sustainability reporting standards.

The increasingly stringent EU regime for green finance was discussed in Paris on Wednesday at the World Pensions Council conference. Pension fund APG believes that the EU approach has introduced “commercial incentives to go dark green”, exposing the industry to greenwashing. “I am not convinced that all the rules and regulations get the industry to do the right thing,” said Gert Dijkstra, senior managing director at APG.