The Financial Sector Supervisory Authority (CSSF) has announced on December 2 the introduction of a fast-track procedure to facilitate submission of updated prospectuses or issuing documents update for UCITS and alternative investment funds under the EU’s Taxonomy Regulation, ahead of a deadline of January 1.

The beginning of next year is the deadline for updates of pre-contractual documents for UCITS and AIFs to incorporate information on environmentally sustainable investments in pre-contractual disclosures relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation goals and the use of templates under the draft regulatory technical standards for the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.

The Taxonomy Regulation of June 18, 2020 (“TR”), including amendments to the SFDR of November 27, 2019, requires financial market participants to provide transparency for funds subject to SFDR articles 8 and 9 in their pre-contractual disclosures by January 1, in accordance with articles 5, 6 and 7 of the Taxonomy Regulation.

The TR FastTrack procedure is restricted to updates required under articles 5, 6 and 7. Each updated UCITS prospectus submitted for a certified electronic ‘visa stamp’ must be accompanied by a confirmation letter, for which the CSSF has provided a template for UCITS here. The CSSF says that for complete and compliant submissions under the fast-track procedure received by December 17, it will endeavour to provide visa stamps before December 31.

Luxembourg-based authorised AIFMs should submit to the CSSF for each AIF managed the information required under the SFDR and the Taxonomy Regulation to be disclosed to investors under SFDR Article 6(3), sent to the e-mail address opc@cssf.lu. The AIFMs should also indicate where the information has been disclosed to investors, and future updates should be communicated to the CSSF in a timely manner.

The same procedure applies to Luxembourg-based managers registered by the CSSF under the EU venture capital funds (EuVECA) and social entrepreneurship funds (EuSEF) regulations, and to AIFs managed by a Luxembourg registered AIFM, while the regulator says updates to the prospectuses of existing Luxembourg ELTIFs will be handled swiftly on a case-by-case basis. All Luxembourg-based AIFs managed by an AIFM not authorised or registered by the CSSF should apply the requirements imposed by the AIFM’s home regulator.

The CSSF notes that while the SFDR Level 1 requirements regarding pre-contractual disclosures came into force on March 10 this year, the Level 2 requirements have been delayed. The European Commission wrote to the EU Council on November 25 announcing that the implementation of the SFDR regulatory technical standards will now be delayed until January 1, 2023.

However, the CSSF encourages financial market participants already to use for disclosure purposes the pre-contractual and periodic product templates provided in the draft RTS published on October 22. It says the various sections of the templates should be completed as far as possible on a best-efforts basis during the transition period.

Feel free to get in touch with our investment management team for more information.