Legal & Regulatory News

French and Dutch financial market authorities publish joint position paper calling for EU regulation on the provision of ESG data, ratings, and related services

The French Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and the Dutch Autoriteit Financiële Markten (AFM) have published a joint position paper proposing a European regulatory framework for sustainability-related service providers (SSPs) who provide ESG data, ratings, and other related services to financial market participants. In particular, the AMF and AFM advocate the following:

• An ad-hoc European mandatory regulatory framework for SSPs.
• Using an EU regulation to entrust authorisation and supervision of SSPs to ESMA.
• A regulatory focus on transparency about methodologies, potential conflicts of interest, and governance and internal control requirements.
• Allowing for proportionality and continued market innovation.
• A step-by-step approach: a set of core requirements for SSPs, serving as a starting point, to be reviewed periodically in light of market developments and, where appropriate, complemented by additional measures.

The aim of the proposed regulatory framework would be to prevent misallocation of investments, greenwashing and to ensure investor protection.

Click here to read the joint position paper.