(1)

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 (2) specifies the content and presentation of the information that non-financial and financial undertakings, that are subject to an obligation to publish sustainability information pursuant to Article 19a or Article 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council (3), have to disclose in their management report pursuant to Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 does so by translating the technical screening criteria for environmentally sustainable economic activities laid down in Commission Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 (4) and (EU) 2023/2486 (5) into quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs). Those KPIs show whether, and to what extent, the activities of those undertakings are associated with such environmentally sustainable economic activities, and thus help investors and the public to understand the environmental performance of those undertakings in relation to activities covered by Regulation (EU) 2020/852 and Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 (hereinafter collectively referred to as the ‘Taxonomy’) and their trajectories towards aligning their activities with the Taxonomy criteria, which in its turn facilitates the financing of environmentally sustainable activities and projects. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 thus increases market transparency and helps preventing greenwashing by informing investors about an undertaking’s environmental performance.

(2)

Non-financial undertakings started reporting their KPIs under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 as of 1 January 2023 and, financial undertakings as of 1 January 2024. Between the first and second years of reporting by non-financial undertakings the value of turnover and capital expenditures associated with environmentally sustainable economic activities increased significantly.

(3)

Despite an uptake of the Taxonomy, the feedback and the accumulated reporting experience of both non-financial and financial undertakings shows that the content and presentation of information to be disclosed in accordance with Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 should be simplified and improved to reduce undue reporting burdens and duplicative reporting. Such simplification and improvement should, however, not do away with the essential elements concerning the extent to which the activities of reporting undertakings are associated with environmentally sustainable economic activities. Such simplification and improvement should produce a tangible and immediate relief for the reporting undertakings for their reporting that will take place in 2026.

(4)

To reduce reporting burdens of non-financial undertakings, in light of the principle of proportionality, those undertakings should be able to opt for not assessing compliance of economic activities with the technical screening criteria set out in Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 where those activities are not financially material for their business. Likewise, financial undertakings should be able to opt for not assessing compliance with the technical screening criteria set out in Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 of their exposures financing specific economic activities or assets of their counterparties where those exposures are not financially material. Where the activities of financial undertakings have a general purpose of financing all the activities of their counterparties, the financial undertakings should take into account the non-material activities of those counterparties when computing their respective non-material financial activities.

(5)

To ensure legal certainty, it is necessary to specify a threshold for an economic activity, asset or revenue below which they are considered as not financially material for the purposes of transparency obligations under Regulation (EU) 2020/852.

(6)

It is important to provide investors and the public with an overview of which activities are considered as non-material for each KPI. In addition, it should be avoided that non-material activities are removed from the denominator of the relevant KPIs, or that within the non-material activities, undertakings include deliberately harmful activities, that would distort the reporting and contradict the objectives underpinning Regulation (EU) 2020/852. Therefore, non-financial and financial undertakings should report separately non-material activities at aggregated and individual levels. In the contextual information explaining the reporting templates, undertakings should clearly state at individual level the sector of the economic activities that are considered as non-material to ensure transparency on those activities. For doing so, reporting undertakings may use the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Union (NACE) established by Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council (6).

(7)

In view of the proposal (7) by the Commission of a Directive amending Directive 2013/34/EU to ensure that the requirement to report on taxonomy-related information remains proportionate and to provide sufficient time for credit institutions to implement the reporting requirements laid down in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178, the application of the reporting requirements related to the Trading Book KPI, and Fees and Commission KPI should be deferred until 2028.

(8)

Moreover, it is appropriate to establish a graduated approach to the materiality of the different classes of information to be reported. As it is generally considered that information on operational expenditure is of lesser significance and decision usefulness to assessment of the sustainability of activities of undertakings than that on turnover or capital expenditure, non-financial undertakings should be allowed not to report on taxonomy-eligibility and alignment of operational expenditure where the operational expenditure is not financially material for their business model. That flexibility would still preserve transparency of undertakings to financial market participants and investors, whilst ensuring a proportional application of the reporting requirements under Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852.

(9)

Exposures, for which it is not possible to carry out an assessment of taxonomy-eligibility or taxonomy-alignment, such as derivatives, cash and cash equivalents, on demand bank loans, goodwill or commodities, should be excluded from the denominator of the KPIs of financial undertakings.

(10)

Article 7(3) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 does not require financial undertakings to take into account in the calculation of the numerator of their KPIs exposures to counterparty undertakings that are not subject to the reporting requirements laid down in Articles 19a and 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU. For that reason, the KPIs of financial undertakings cannot reflect the financing of economic activities and assets of the counterparty undertakings that are sustainable under Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852. To ensure the accuracy of KPIs of financial undertakings, while avoiding that their counterparty undertakings are indirectly subject to stringent Taxonomy criteria in their access to sustainable finance, it is necessary to align the numerator and the denominator of the applicable KPIs and exclude the exposures of financial undertakings to those counterparty undertakings from the denominator of applicable KPIs. Therefore, the scope of the KPIs of financial undertakings should capture all financing and investments in undertakings that are subject to the reporting requirements laid down in Articles 19a and 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU, and in subsidiaries of parent-undertakings subject to Article 29a of that Directive given that those parent undertakings report individual sustainability information, including under the Taxonomy, about these subsidiaries. This means that it is necessary to include in the scope of KPIs of financial undertakings exposures to other counterparty undertakings that are not subject to the reporting requirements laid down in Article 19a of Directive 2013/34/EU, but are part of a group of undertakings that is captured by consolidated reporting of a parent undertaking under Article 29a of that Directive. Similarly, exposures to special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that finance undertaking that are subject to the reporting requirements laid down in Articles 19a or 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU, and their respective subsidiaries, should be included in the scope of the KPIs of financial undertakings.

(11)

While exposures of financial undertakings to counterparty undertakings that are not subject to the reporting requirements laid down in Articles 19a and 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU, and in Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852, should be excluded from the KPIs of financial undertakings, financial undertakings may still include in their KPIs exposures to their counterparty undertakings which comply on a voluntary basis with the requirements laid down in Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852. Similarly, financial undertakings may include in their KPIs exposures to those counterparty undertakings that finance specific economic activities or assets based on available information about the compliance of those economic activities and assets with the Taxonomy criteria. As a result of those changes, Article 7(4) and (7) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 become irrelevant and, therefore, should be deleted.

(12)

The aim to reduce administrative burdens and to simplify reporting obligations should be distinguished from the ongoing longer-term substantive reviews of the reporting requirements laid down in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 and of the Taxonomy technical screening criteria laid down in Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 to facilitate significantly the implementation of those reporting requirements and criteria. In view of the complexity of the reporting requirements of financial undertakings, compliance of which depends on the flow of information and data from the counterparties they finance, and until the review of the reporting requirements and technical screening criteria laid down in Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 is finalised, financial undertakings should be given the option not to use the templates laid down in the Annexes to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 to comply with their disclosure obligations laid down in Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852. Instead, to ensure legal certainty, prevent risks of greenwashing, and observe proportionality, such undertakings should publish a standard statement in their management report to indicate that they do not claim that their economic activities are associated with environmentally sustainable activities as referred to in Regulation (EU) 2020/852.

(13)

To reduce the complexity and length of the reporting templates and ease considerably the reporting of undertakings under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178, reporting templates provided in that Delegated Regulation should be significantly shortened and simplified without losing essential information provided in those templates concerning the extent to which the activities of the reporting undertakings are associated with environmentally sustainable economic activities. Moreover, the specific templates provided in Annex XII to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 related to the activities in the fossil gas and nuclear sectors should be deleted to reduce reporting burdens and to avoid duplication with information disclosed by non-financial undertakings in the templates provided in Annexe II to this Regulation. Non-financial undertakings should disclose the same categories of information with respect to their material activities in the fossil gas and nuclear sectors as for other sectors. To reduce the reporting burden for financial undertakings and to ensure consistency with taxonomy disclosures of their counterparties, it is necessary to amend Annexes IV, VI, VIII and X to that Regulation to ensure that financial undertakings disclose consistently their exposures to taxonomy-eligible or taxonomy-aligned activities in the fossil gas and nuclear sectors in aggregate form.

(14)

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 should therefore be amended accordingly.

(15)

Compliance with all the criteria laid down in Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 for determining whether an economic activity causes no significant harm to any of the environmental objectives is a necessary condition of that economic activity to be considered environmentally sustainable. Failure to demonstrate compliance with even one of those criteria results in the impossibility for an undertaking to report its economic activities as environmentally sustainable. Undertakings encounter difficulties in assessing and demonstrating compliance with certain of those criteria. To reduce administrative burden for undertakings, those criteria should be amended.

(16)

The generic criteria for determining whether an economic activity causes no significant harm to pollution prevention and control regarding the use and presence of chemicals are applicable to economic activities in different sectors. Assessing compliance with those requirements poses a particular burden to undertakings due to their complexity. To increase legal clarity and consistency of certain elements of those generic criteria, the application of certain exemptions based on Union law that are referenced in those criteria should be specified.

(17)

Regulation (EU) 2024/590 of the European Parliament and of the Council (8) allows for a certain number of clearly specified exemptions from the prohibition of use of substances that deplete the ozone layer. The generic criteria for determining whether an economic activity causes no significant harm to pollution prevention and control should therefore allow for the use of such exemptions and for necessary uses of ozone-depleting substances where alternatives are not available.

(18)

Directive 2011/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council (9) contains exemptions, limited in scope and duration, from the restriction for certain specific materials or components. Those exemptions cater for the situation where substitution is not possible from a scientific and technical point of view, where the negative environmental, health and consumer safety impacts caused by substitution are likely to outweigh the environmental, health and consumer safety benefits of the substitution, or where the reliability of substitutes is not ensured. The generic criteria for determining whether an economic activity causes no significant harm to pollution prevention and control should therefore allow for the use of those exemptions.

(19)

The generic criteria relating to the manufacturing, presence in the final product or output, or placing on the market, of substances that meet the criteria laid down in Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council (10) for one of the hazard classes or hazard categories referred to in Article 57 of Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council (11) require reporting undertakings to screen through a very large number of substances, including their presence in all products and outputs of their economic activity. Regulations (EC) No 1272/2008 and (EC) No 1907/2006 require the communication by suppliers of all the necessary data in relation to the presence of those substances on their own and in mixtures and, for substances of very high concern, in articles. There are, however, no legal obligations to provide such information for substances that meet the criteria for one of the hazard classes or hazard categories referred to in Article 57 of Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 if they are present in articles. Collecting information in the supply chain for those substances entails therefore additional burden for reporting undertakings. To avoid such additional administrative burden on reporting undertakings, the horizontal criteria for that group of substances should therefore be removed.

(20)

Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 should therefore be amended accordingly.

(21)

The six environmental objectives referred to in Article 9, points (a) to (f), of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 and in Articles 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 of that Regulation are closely interlinked in terms of the means by which an environmental objective is achieved and the benefits that achieving one of those environmental objectives may have on the other environmental objectives. The provisions determining whether an economic activity contributes substantially to those environmental objectives are thus closely interrelated. Those provisions are also closely linked to the disclosure obligations laid down in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178. To ensure coherence between the amendments to those provisions, which should enter into force at the same time, to facilitate a comprehensive view of the legal framework for stakeholders, and to facilitate the application of Regulation (EU) 2020/852, it is necessary to include those amendments into a single Regulation.

(22)

This Regulation is consistent with the climate-neutrality objective set out in Article 2(1) of Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 of the European Parliament and of the Council (12) and ensures progress on climate change adaptation as referred to in Article 5 of that Regulation. The Regulation does not amend the technical screening criteria for substantial contribution to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and the technical screening criteria for do no significant harm to climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation which were assessed against the consistency with the objective and targets of Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 as required by Article 6(4) of that Regulation.

(23)

Pursuant to Article 30 of Directive 2013/34/EU, the management reports are to be published within a reasonable period of time, which is not exceeding 12 months after the balance sheet date. To ensure that undertakings may apply the amendments laid down in this Regulation for the financial year 2025, this Regulation should apply from 1 January 2026. However, to avoid undue costs of compliance with the amendments laid down in this Regulation, undertakings should be able to apply Delegated Regulations (EU) 2021/2178, (EU) 2021/2139 and (EU) 2023/2486 as applicable on 31 December 2025 for the financial year that starts between 1 January and 31 December 2025,

(1)

in Article 2, the following paragraphs (1a) to (1d) are inserted:

(2)

in Article 3, the following paragraph 1a is inserted:

(3)

in Article 4, the following paragraphs 1a to 1f are inserted:

(4)

in Article 5, the following paragraphs 1a and 1b are inserted:

(5)

in Article 6, the following paragraphs 1a and 1b are inserted:

(6)

Article 7 is amended as follows:

(7)

in Article 8 paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 are replaced by the following:

(8)

in Article 10(5) the second subparagraph is replaced by the following:

‘Sections 1.2.3 and 1.2.4 of Annex V shall apply from 1 January 2028.’;

(9)

Annex I is amended in accordance with Annex I to this Regulation;

(10)

Annex II is replaced by the text in Annex II to this Regulation;

(11)

Annex III is amended in accordance with Annex III to this Regulation;

(12)

Annex IV is replaced by the text in Annex IV to this Regulation;

(13)

Annex V is amended in accordance with Annex V to this Regulation;

(14)

Annex VI is replaced by the text in Annex VI to this Regulation;

(15)

Annex VII is amended in accordance with Annex VII to this Regulation;

(16)

Annex VIII is replaced by the text in Annex VIII to this Regulation;

(17)

Annex IX is amended in accordance with Annex IX to this Regulation;

(18)

Annex X is replaced by the text in Annex X to this Regulation;

(19)

Annex XI is amended in accordance with Annex XI to this Regulation;

(20)

Annex XII is deleted.

(1)

Annex I is amended in accordance with Annex XII to this Regulation;

(2)

Annex II is amended in accordance with Annex XIII to this Regulation.

(1)

Annex I is amended in accordance with Annex XIV to this Regulation;

(2)

Annex II is amended in accordance with Annex XV to this Regulation;

(3)

Annex IV is amended in accordance with Annex XVI to this Regulation.