TEG Report on Taxonomy – draft technical screening criteria create legal uncertainty and ignore the long-term characteristics of forests

In March 2018, the Commission published the Action Plan: Financing Sustainable Growth, which is intended to represent a strategy for a financial system that supports the EU’s climate and sustainable development agenda. To assist the work on this action plan, a Technical Expert Group on sustainable finance (TEG) was created in July 2018. The TEG has 35 members representing civil society, academia, business, the finance sector, as well as additional members and observers from the EU and international public bodies. Olof Johansson (Sveaskog) has been invited as an external expert to a number of meetings on forest-related matters.

On 18 June 2019, the TEG published its Technical report on EU sustainable finance (taxonomy). This report lays the groundwork for a future EU taxonomy in legislation.

EUSTAFOR has already expressed its views on the process and how forestry-relevant issued have been covered by the process through a Joint statementand a Joint press release. The most recent Joint statement, published by EUSTAFOR on 5 September 2019, together with other organisations (CEPF, CEPI, COPA & COGECA, CEI-Bois, EOS and BIOENERGY EUROPE), points out that the current TEG report’s draft technical screening criteria for forestry creates legal uncertainty and ignores the long-term characteristics of forests. The undersigned organizations highly recommend relying on Member States’ legislation in assessing the sustainability of investments in forestry instead of developing an additional new system of screening criteria for forests and forestry.

The complete statement is available at this link.