14. EU Sustainable Finance Regulation

The adoption in 2015 of both the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change served to focus attention on a fundamental rethinking of many aspects of society. The financial system certainly did not escape scrutiny. Indeed, the European Commission launched its Sustainable Finance Action Plan in 2018 and a number of legislative enactments have subsequently been adopted. This chapter analyses these developments in the context of a number of contemporary debates as to the nature, purpose, and scope of European private law. Specifically, this contribution considers the following questions: does the EU approach to sustainable finance reveal a further instrumentalisation of private law and, if so, to what ends? Does the approach signal a movement towards or away from the Europeanisation of private law? What does the approach to sustainable finance reveal in terms of the EU’s view on financialisation? To what extent does the approach indicate that financial regulation must have an economic rationale? And does the approach indicate a view as to the role of the consumer in the (sustainable) financial system?