European Commission formally adopts final delegated act on climate change under EU Taxonomy Regulation

On 21 April, we reported that the European Commission had published the final version of the delegated act ("DA") containing the technical screening criteria for climate change adaptation and mitigation under the Taxonomy Regulation, but that it would only be formally adopted by the Commission once translations were available in all EU languages (see our previous blog post). 

According to the Commission's webpage, the Taxonomy DA was formally adopted by the Commission on 4 June. So the European Parliament and the Council now have four months (which can be extended by an additional two months) to say whether they object to the DA. If the DA survives the scrutiny process, the climate technical screening criteria set out in that DA will then apply from 1 January 2022.

The European Parliament and Council do not have the power to amend the DA – they must either approve or reject it, on qualified majority voting rules, so no one single Member State can veto the DA on its own. 

Links to the formally adopted version of the Taxonomy DA along with its two Annexes can be accessed here.

In the meantime, we are still waiting for the Platform on Sustainable Finance to publish its recommendations on the technical screening criteria for the other four environmental objectives in the EU taxonomy.