EU Taxonomy: what SMEs need to know
The European classification of sustainable activities: who has direct obligations and why it affects SMEs through banks and clients.
The EU Taxonomy is the European classification that establishes which economic activities can be called environmentally sustainable, on the basis of technical criteria. The direct obligations concern large companies and financial operators, but the mechanism also touches SMEs: those who finance and those who buy use the Taxonomy to steer capital and supplies.
How the classification works
An activity is aligned with the Taxonomy if it contributes substantially to at least one of the six European environmental objectives (from climate change mitigation to the circular economy), without significantly harming the others and respecting minimum social safeguards. The criteria are technical and specific by activity: emission thresholds, efficiency requirements, process characteristics.
Who has direct obligations
Large companies subject to reporting and financial operators, which must declare how much of their activities and portfolios is aligned. Non-listed SMEs have no direct taxonomy reporting obligations.
Why it concerns SMEs anyway
Two channels. The banks: to calculate their own indicators they ask the companies they finance for data on activities, consumption and emissions. The large clients: for their own declarations they may prefer suppliers able to document environmental performance. In both cases, the request that reaches the SME translates into measured data: consumption, emissions, characteristics of the investments. The ESG VSME report covers the largely predominant part of these requests.
