First and foremost, companies operating in accordance with the requirements of the Taxonomy Regulation must comply with the Delegated Acts in addition to the Taxonomy Regulation. To date, there are two delegated acts that are particularly relevant - one on Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation (non-financial reporting and EU taxonomy) and one on the two environmental objectives of climate change mitigation and adaptation(technical assessment criteria). Another Delegated Regulation relates to the inclusion of economic activities related to fossil gas and nuclear energy and their qualification as transitional activities within the meaning of the EU Taxonomy.
In order to facilitate the implementation of the regulations and to specify individual components in more detail, the EU Commission has already published several specific FAQ documents for the standard's addressees.
Initially, a whole series of FAQs on general issues relating to the EU taxonomy were published on the Commission's website in April 2021.
The next FAQs on the EU taxonomy and its application in practice will focus on the implementation of Art. 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation and the associated Delegated Regulation.
At the end of 2022, the EU Commission published two new FAQ documents on the application of the EU taxonomy, in which a large number of other legal provisions already in force are explained:
In the first document, the 34 questions are intended to provide companies with assistance in interpreting certain legal provisions of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 on the content and presentation of the information to be disclosed in conjunction with Art. 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation.
The second document contains 187 statements on the application of individual technical assessment criteria contained in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2139.
No final delegated acts and therefore no further explanations have yet been published for the remaining four environmental objectives of the EU taxonomy. So far, there is only a report by the Platform on Sustainable Finance and a supplementary report (both from 2022), which are expected to be used as the basis for the EU Commission's preparation of the delegated acts.
The "Taxonomy Compass", which is available on the European Commission's website, provides a comprehensive overview of the details, in particular the technical assessment criteria.
