The EU Commission also wants to align the regulation of the insurance industry more closely to climate protection criteria.

This emerges from the proposal to revise the Solvency Directive (Solvency II) for the industry, which Financial Market Commissioner Mairead McGuinness intends to present this Wednesday.

The FAZ has received the draft of the proposal.

Specifically, the EU insurance supervisory authority EIOPA is to examine the extent to which insurance and reinsurance companies that invest particularly heavily in green financial products can be given preferential treatment in the regulation.

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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The Commission has already made similar proposals for the banking sector. The basic idea here as there is that a risk assessment of investments should not only refer to the financial market risk, but also to the climate risks associated with an investment. Anyone who contributes to the fight against climate change in the industry should be rewarded by the financial supervisory authority, whoever acts harmful to the climate should be punished. In addition to a modified risk assessment based on climate protection criteria, the Commission also wants to ensure in general that the transition to a “sustainable economy” decided by the EU does not fail due to funding bottlenecks.

The previous Solvency regulation assigns each financial market risk its own capital requirement.

The proposals are part of the scheduled revision of Solvency II. Another focus is on more differentiated risk criteria with which the risk assessment for individual companies should be more proportionate.

There should be a new category of insurance with a particularly low risk.

These are to be subject to fewer obligations in corporate reporting, self-risk assessment and the disclosure of data.

Adjustments are welcome

The Commission also wants to introduce higher thresholds for the scope of the directive. In addition to the planned revision of Solvency II, there is a Commission proposal for a directive on the resolution of troubled insurance or reinsurance companies. It is based on the existing resolution regime for banks.

The CSU MEP Markus Ferber criticized the regulatory preference for "green" investments. In principle, the financial supervisory authority must orient itself towards the financial market risk. With its plans, the Commission is doing "a disservice to financial stability and thus ultimately to the insured." In contrast, the CSU politician praised the fact that the EU authority wants to differentiate the risk assessment more strongly. “More proportionality in insurance supervision is very welcome. So far, insurance supervision has lumped all insurance companies together. ”It is good that the Commission now wants to change that.