The financial system consolidated in recent decades has proven clearly reluctant to joining the coalition of financial and civil society institutions fighting for sustainable development. For many citizens, this financial system has been simply unable to act in the wider interest of society and the planet. Facing this systemic failure, the European Union's Sustainable Finance Agenda is more than welcome. The new orientation of the EU recognizes the unsustainability of a large part of the current financial system and aims to frame and develop a possible alternative, including among its objectives the redirection of financial flows towards sustainability.

The new European agenda focuses the analysis on the impact of finance on the environment and climate change: an understandable and widely accepted choice. Climate change is in fact an important and urgent issue that requires immediate action; the current financial system has an enormous responsibility in the devastation of the planet and the climate; the impact of financial choices on climate change are quite easily measurable with specific indicators and the political moment is favourable to take action in this regard.

With this document, FEBEA wants to highlight the gaps in the current proposition of “sustainable finance” as framed by the EU, proposing to integrate some of the practices and approaches linked to Ethical Finance, as understood by dozens of financial institutions active in Europe for at least the last two decades.