Environmental groups, trade unions, and investors have expressed concern over the European Commission’s decision to deprioritize corporate disclosure rules for oil, gas, mining and other sectors. The Commission had recently issued a call to the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group to prioritize the implementation of broader guidelines instead of detailed, sector-specific standards. In a joint letter to Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and Financial Services Commissioner, Mairead McGuinness, World Benchmarking Alliance, Finance Watch, Eurosif, WWF, CDP and Share Action, among other groups, have urged the EU to clarify the timeline for the first two sector-specific standards and to not exclude or postpone any parts of the general ESG disclosure standards under development.
Mairead McGuinness has recently said that the goal is to reduce the burden on all stakeholders, free up resources to implement the first set of general disclosures, and the final version of the standards is going to be made available for public comment soon. The environmentalists also called into attention that the Net Zero Industry Act, European’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act to promote investment in clean technology projects, poses a threat of weakening the corporate sustainability disclosures.
The company mentioned in this article is the European Commission, and the person mentioned is Mairead McGuinness. The European Commission is the executive arm of the European Union and promotes its aims and serves as the watchdog of EU laws. Mairead McGuinness is the Vice President of the European Commission for Financial Services, Financial Stability and Capital Markets Union. She has a strong financial background in the private and public sector, and strives to balance economic and social needs for the European Union.
