SFDR 2.0 Is Coming: Why EU Sustainable Finance Law Needs a New Commentary Now
On 4 May 2026, the European Parliament published its draft report on reforming the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation — the follow-up to the European Commission's November 2025 proposal to strip out entity-level disclosure duties, exclude financial advisers, and replace today's product-level regime with a simplified categorisation system. Parliament's text pushes back on parts of that proposal (it would bring packaged retail investment products into scope, for instance, and raise the taxonomy-alignment threshold for "transition" and "sustainable" products from 15% to 20%), but the direction is set: SFDR as compliance teams know it today is being rebuilt, with Level 2 delegated rules still to be drafted and application realistically some two years away.
That makes the current legal architecture — not the reform itself — the thing worth understanding properly right now. EU Sustainable Finance Law: A Commentary, edited by Seraina Grünewald and Ann-Katrin Kaufhold, is an article-by-article reading of exactly the instruments on the table: the Taxonomy Regulation, the SFDR, the Climate Benchmarks Regulation, the MiFID II sustainability-preferences regime, and the European Green Bond Standard. You cannot track what SFDR 2.0 changes without a precise grip on what SFDR 1.0 currently requires.
In practice, that means three concrete jobs this commentary is built for. A compliance officer mapping a fund's existing Article 8 or Article 9 disclosures before the new categorisation system lands, to know what survives and what has to be rebuilt. An in-house counsel assessing whether a product's taxonomy-alignment percentage needs to move once the 15%-to-20% threshold is confirmed. And an adviser preparing clients for the possibility that structured products and structured deposits — currently outside SFDR — are brought into scope under Parliament's draft.
For academic law libraries building out EU financial regulation and sustainable finance collections, this is the reference edition to hold now, while the current regime is still the operative one and before a recast text arrives in a few years' time — exactly the moment a precise, article-by-article baseline earns its shelf space.
CLNZ Books ships this and every title worldwide, with the price covering delivery and institutional invoicing available for libraries and firms that need it.
Q&A
Q: What is SFDR 2.0 and why does it matter for this book?
A: SFDR 2.0 is the European Commission and Parliament's ongoing reform of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. This commentary covers the current, still-operative version of SFDR and the other instruments the reform touches, which is exactly what practitioners need to track the change against.
Q: When will SFDR 2.0 actually apply?
A: Based on Parliament's extended timeline for publication and applicability, current estimates put application around 2028 — meaning the existing regime covered in this commentary remains the operative law for some time yet.
Q: Does the book cover the European Green Bond Standard as well as SFDR?
A: Yes — alongside the SFDR, it gives article-by-article treatment of the Taxonomy Regulation, the Climate Benchmarks Regulation, the MiFID II sustainability-preferences regime, and the European Green Bond Standard.
Q: Who is this commentary written for?
A: In-house legal practitioners and compliance officers at financial institutions, EU supervisory and regulatory authority staff, and academics and practitioners of European finance and banking law.
Q: Where can I buy EU Sustainable Finance Law: A Commentary?
A: Directly from CLNZ Books, with worldwide shipping included in the price and institutional invoicing available on request.