Is There a risk of Greenwashing in the application of the EU SFDR in the SRI Fund Industry? Some critical issues.

The present research has the aim to analyze the effects that the new European legislation is having on the sustainable investment market in order to evaluate whether the predisposed goals can be said to be achieved or not. In particular, the author wants to analyze the impact of the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (2019/2088 EU), known as SFDR, on the SRI Fund Industry, considering that interpretative difficulties have arisen in the SRI market with the introduction of SFDR. The analysis shows that critical issues in the implementation of SFDR reside not so much in its disclosure obligations, but upstream, in the definition of sustainable investmentand in its product classification (as Article 6, Article 8 and Article 9) that lead to a situation characterized by an excessive subjectivity by asset managers of SRI Funds when they are called to qualify the products they offer. Because of the consequent risk of greenwashing in SFDR application, the necessity of its urgent adjustment can be pointed out and the work presents in its final part the indication of some policy recommendations to policymakers drafted by Eurosif just to realize these necessary adjustments of the EU regulation.