On December 12, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) launched a public consultation on the draft opinion regarding sustainability disclosures and greenwashing.
The increasing global awareness of sustainability has led more insurance consumers and pension savers to invest in sustainable products.
However, there has been a rise in greenwashing phenomena involving marketing techniques aimed at making misleading claims about the sustainability of products.
EIOPA aims to counter this by proposing a common supervisory approach based on 4 principles (enforced by national authorities) stating that sustainability disclosures should be:
Accurate, precise, and consistent with the provider’s overall EIOPA – Feedback on approaches to combat Greenwashing
- profile and business model or the profile of its products;
- Kept up-to-date, with any changes promptly disclosed and clearly explained;
- Supported by clear facts and reasoning;
- Accessible to stakeholders, along with the underpinning rationale.
The public consultation will remain active until 12 March 12 2024, and comments can be submitted through the online survey on the Authority’s website before that deadline.