Is France leading the way on ESG investors’ mandatory reporting?
The European Commission’s set of priorities to boost development revolve around jobs and growth, as outlined in the Green Paper ‘Building a Capital Market Union’ published in February last year. Building stronger capital markets to help reduce reliance on banks for funding, while complementing their role. Part of the measures set out to develop and integrate capital markets focus on increasing and diversifying the sources of funding. To this end, enhanced focus was given on emerging investment categories with high potential such as ESG investments. The Green Paper introduced a consultation to define the priority actions needed to put in place, by 2019, the key elements of a more functional Capital Markets Union. In the aftermath of the consultation, Eurosif published its ‘Capital Markets Union Manifesto’, highlighting the importance of not decoupling Europe’s growth and job creation agenda from the broader sustainability agenda.