The EU wants to take forward the concept of Sustainable Finance. VDMA President Karl Haeusgen said at a virtual panel discussion of the VDMA European Office together with Euractiv:

"We support the concept of Sustainable Finance in Europe. The objective of defining a common understanding of sustainable investments and economic activities is right. But the details of the EU Taxonomy are extremely worrying for an innovative and medium-sized industry like the mechanical engineering sector.

It does not make sense to define and distinguish between individual technologies in a fixed technology list. This does not do justice to mechanical and plant engineering industry, which with most of its technologies does not appear in the positive list of suitable technologies, although it already makes a significant contribution to climate protection. All low-emission technologies must have access to sustainable finance.

Moreover, such an approach, which only focuses on the technological status quo, hinders possible innovations for the future. There is a risk that financing will no longer be available for future technologies.

We therefore need a flexible, simple and efficient Taxonomy that does not exclude technologies and can be used by small and medium-sized enterprises in particular without a great deal of bureaucracy."

The recording of the virtual panel discussion can be found here.