Publications
& Policy

This update is designed to give members greater visibility on both the policy developments affecting private capital and the work we do to influence them. The publication reviews 26 key EU legislative and policy initiatives spanning fundraising, taxation, sustainability, innovation, strategic sectors and capital markets, helping members understand the opportunities and challenges ahead for the industry.

Sustainability reporting serves as a practical tool for investment decision‑making and value creation. As such, Invest Europe’s response to the revision of the ESRS and the voluntary standard highlights key priorities to ensure the framework remains coherent with the ongoing developments of SFDR 2.0, proportionate, usable and aligned with how sustainability reporting works in private capital and its investment universe, while being integrated across the investment lifecycle and focused on decision‑useful, comparable, and emerging information.

In this paper, prepared in response to a European Commission public consultation, we set out our views on the new European Climate Resilience Framework.

This paper sets out Invest Europe's overall assessment of the European Commission’s SFDR 2.0 proposal, highlighting both its key strengths and the remaining challenges, particularly from a PE/VC perspective. It also provides targeted recommendations aimed at addressing these concerns and enhancing the effectiveness of the revised framework, ensuring it remains proportionate and adaptable to the diversity of asset classes, business models, and investors within its scope.

During this webinar we unpacked the key elements of the review and discussed what they could mean in practice for PE/VC fund managers and investors.

Invest Europe’s response supports the drive for simplification, proportionality, and interoperability, while underlining the importance of clarifying the treatment and expectations for private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) and better reflecting investor needs within the standards to ensure these are both practical and decision-useful.

In this response, we emphasised that climate resilience is vital for protecting assets, ensuring market stability, and unlocking new opportunities in a climate-volatile world. By addressing financing gaps, regulatory hurdles, and scaling innovative solutions, strategic adaptation investments can strengthen markets and drive sustainable growth. This submission forms part of Invest Europe’s engagement through the Climate Resilience Reflection Group.

Invest Europe’s response reiterates key messages and highlights the long-term benefits of the proposed simplification measures, if delivered in a consistent manner and taking into account how these sustainability frameworks will be used in practice.

Invest Europe’s response focuses on targeted improvements to CSRD, CSDDD and the EU Taxonomy to ensure they remain practical, proportionate and aligned with investor needs. Key recommendations include simplifying materiality assessments, ensuring realistic assurance and due diligence exercises, and improving interoperability with global and EU frameworks.

This response to the European Commission’s Call for Evidence outlines the industry’s views on the future direction of the SFDR, reaffirming – among other points – that it should remain a disclosure-based regime and that clear grandfathering provisions should be introduced.

In this paper, we set out our recommendations on the European Commission’s Sustainability Omnibus Proposal of 26 February 2025, including targeted improvements to ensure the framework remains simple, usable, scalable, and aligned with international standards, while supporting long-term value creation.

In its response, Invest Europe highlighted key barriers currently limiting PE and VC engagement in defence such regulatory fragmentation, uncertainty around exit pathways, the lack of common definitions and ESG alignment for defence investments, and an underdeveloped public private financing infrastructure to de-risk and scale capital deployment.

Recent geopolitical and policy developments – both within and beyond the EU – are influencing the sustainability conversation.

Invest Europe's feedback to the European Commission on the proposed amendments to the Taxonomy Delegated Acts, as part of the broader Omnibus simplification package on sustainability, highlighting areas where further clarification and refinement would improve the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed changes.

The Platform on Sustainable Finance, an advisory body to the European Commission, has published an independent report on streamlining sustainable finance for SMEs. The report builds also on the experience with the implementation of the sustainability guarantee under the InvestEU programme (and its accompanying tools) and suggests developing a voluntary, streamlined approach – the “SME sustainable finance standard” – to help SMEs and their lenders or financiers voluntarily demonstrate SMEs’ environmental sustainability performance.