The European Union Taxonomy (EU) is one of the instruments supporting the European Green Deal. It aims to encourage public and private investment to be allocated to sustainable activities, thereby contributing towards the European Commission’s carbon-neutral targets by 2050. The Taxonomy recognises environmentally sustainable economic activities to be those that:
- make a substantial contribution to at least one of the six environmental objectives: i) climate change mitigation; ii) climate change adaptation; iii) the sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources; iv) the transition to a circular economy; v) pollution prevention and control and vi) the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems;
- do no significant harm to any of the other environmental objectives;
- meet minimum social safeguards.
Of the six defined environmental objectives, those relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation are regulated by the Climate Delegated Act and the Complementary Climate Delegated Act (the latter covering specific activities in the gas and nuclear energy industry). In 2023, new economic activities were introduced to achieve these two objectives. The remaining objectives are covered in the Environmental Delegated Act, also published in 2023. These documents list the eligible economic activities and technical criteria for assessing whether certain economic activities make a “substantial contribution” and at the same time “do no significant harm” to any of the other environmental objectives. Activities that comply with these criteria and those related to the minimum safeguards are considered to be taxonomy-aligned. This analysis, of eligible and aligned activities, must be carried out for three parameters: Turnover, CapEx and OpEx.
Since the European Taxonomy came into force, our main activity, food distribution, has not been included in the Taxonomy’s list of activities, which is why no eligible – or aligned – activities were included in the turnover parameter. As such, only the activities supporting our operations are itemised as eligible and not necessarily the main activities that we carry out, which could make a greater contribution towards the EU’s carbon-neutral targets.