EU JRC - Consultation Paper on Ecolabel for Financial Products

Introduction / Summary

Assogestioni, the Italian asset management association, welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to develop an EU Ecolabel for retail financial products. We see this as an opportunity to create a coherent European approach and promote sustainable investments among the retail investors. We believe that the creation of a European ecolabel based on common principle would be extremely beneficial in creating a European wide market for a “quality” green product also in the financial sector and raise awareness among retail investors on the impact of investment choices on sustainability. 

We agree with the broad scope of the regulation in terms of range of products that would qualify for the label. In terms of the overall approach to the Ecolabel and the type of investment criteria it should reflect, we believe the focus should remain on environmental issues as per the tradition of Ecolabels. 

While we are in favour of the establishment of some threshold to qualify for the label, we caution against the establishment of too strict criteria. If the objective is to identify the top 10-20% most eco-friendly retail investment products, a balance should be reached between setting meaningful standards to create a label that could guide investors toward greener products – should they choose so – but also allowing a sufficiently broad choice of eligible assets for the asset managers to create products with a range of risk/rewards profiles.  

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