European Commission publishes guidelines for green bond disclosure templates
The European Commission has published guidelines establishing voluntary pre-issuance disclosure templates for bonds marketed as either environmentally sustainable or sustainability-linked. These templates support the EU's objective of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 by standardising disclosures for issuers using the EU Taxonomy, thereby complementing the European Green Bond Standard and filling a market gap in demonstrating taxonomy-aligned bond proceeds allocation. The guidelines provide two detailed templates: one for environmentally sustainable bonds, which requires issuers to detail their environmental strategy, the intended allocation of bond proceeds, environmental impacts, and reporting commitments; and another for sustainability-linked bonds, which focuses on the environmental strategy, bond characteristics, performance indicators, and reporting requirements.