Date: 7th July 2021
Author: BETTER FINANCE

7 July 2021 – The European Commission (EC) has adopted a new ‘Strategy for Financing the Transition to a Sustainable Economy' or Sustainable Finance Strategy. BETTER FINANCE commends the EC for this important step and fully supports its stated goals, especially the move towards ensuring more and better access for consumers to “transition finance”.

  • It is crucial that, as long-term and pension savers, EU citizens be allowed to engage directly or indirectly via their collective products (pension plans, mutual funds, etc.) with investee companies. This way they can pressure them to accelerate their green transition – in particular energy transition – to ensure that the huge free cashflow capacities of these companies are increasingly used for “transition finance”. To this end, let us, at last, remove the barriers to individual investor engagement.
  • Besides “transition finance”, individual investors should also enjoy easier access to the new improved anti-greenwashing green bonds.[...]