Press Release
PensionsEurope comments on European Commission’s first Omnibus Package
PensionsEurope welcomes the EC initiative which aims to align crucial EU legislation concerning Sustainable Finance. PensionsEurope firmly believes that the competitiveness of the EU economy is vital and to that purpose, much red tape can be removed or rationalized without undermining the EU’s policy objectives, especially on Sustainable finance.
PensionsEurope will evaluate in detail the content of the proposal and study its consequences for our sector. Transparency and good reporting by companies on their sustainability impact are important to pension funds as investors. Pension funds need comparable information to make good investment decisions. Not all information is equally useful and removing unnecessary rules and burdens for companies is necessary.
Pension funds, as FMPs (Financial Market Participants), are dependent on company data to meet their own reporting requirements under the SFDR (Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation). Although the SFDR has been in force for several years, company reporting has recently been streamlined under the CSRD/ESRS (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive/European Sustainability Reporting Standards). Therefore, the Omnibus proposal changes must be included in the revision of the SFDR to achieve the necessary harmonisation and to avoid the unnecessary burden of double reporting.
Matti Leppälä, Secretary General of PensionsEurope commented on the need to take the specificities of pension funds into consideration: “It is a positive step that the European Commission presented its first Omnibus proposal with a clear purpose to simplify and streamline different interconnected legislation on sustainable finance. Over the past years, the regulatory burden on pension funds has continuously and significantly increased due to cross-sectoral/horizontal legislation such as sustainable finance and digital agenda regulation.”
Matti Leppälä continued to say: “Occupational pension funds are important not only as financial but also as social institutions. In many EU countries, occupational pensions are part of the employment conditions, which are negotiated between employers, employees, and their representatives. This distinguishes pension funds’ members and beneficiaries from retail investment fund customers. Therefore, the specificities of our sector need to be understood, and it is our firm belief that proportionality always needs to be considered.”
We look forward to engaging actively with the EU institutions in the upcoming debates about this proposal and any future initiatives.
For more information, please contact us at info@pensionseurope.eu.
