The recent regulatory developments in the context of the EU Sustainable Finance agenda create an urgent need for publicly available ESG data as well as how to enhance their sourcing. Compliance with the new disclosure obligations introduced by the sustainability disclosures Regulation requires financial market participants to have access to comparable robust and reliable ESG data at the level of companies. Unfortunately, the availability of quality, comparable, reliable and public ESG data is currently rather limited and insufficient to comply with the increasing expectations and new regulatory requirements due to apply shortly. For this reason, the 6 associations jointly call the EU to build and / or support, based on existing solutions, a centralised electronic open source EU ESG data register with the following characteristics:
- The data register should focus on ESG disclosure in line with NFRD, EU taxonomy based information, starting with climate change adaptation and mitigation objectives, as well as ESG data necessary to financial market participants to comply with the SFDR.
- The register should also include relevant ESG information already collected by European and national institutions such as governments, central banks, statistical bodies, etc.
- Such data should be gathered and made available digitally to users of non-financial information, not only investors, but also lenders, academia, researchers, authorities and others.
You can read the joint letter here.