Hello and welcome to another M-Lex podcast. I'm Sam Wilkin, Brussels, news editor, and today we're going to talk about sustainable finance.

This is something that has captured the

imagination of climate regulators and activists as a way to potentially use the free market to

encourage and support environmental targets. But can it live up to the hype? Here to discuss that

with me is John Riga, our Chief our chief financial services correspondence. Hi, John.

Hi. First of all, just give us a quick overview. What is sustainable finance? Well, a lot of

it's right in the name. Sustainability is about looking at the long term, trying to achieve the goals

of tomorrow, not just to make a buck for today. There's no point making a

buck for today if it costs your children a lot more. So the idea is to steer banks and investors

towards backing the things that we want for our planet, for our citizens for the future.

And does that make sense to them in sort of in terms of profitability? Can it be a wise investment as well as an ethical

one? The idea is it could actually make the finance more competitive because you're investing in

things that you can, in activities that you can actually keep going for future generations. So the proponents

would argue that it actually reinforces things like financial stability

in the free market economy.

Okay.

And so I understand not only is this something that activists are putting forward,

it's something that regulators are also trying to promote, especially here in the EU.

What steps have been taken here in Brussels?

This has been a big initiative of the European Commission that's been on the boil over

the last year or so.

The EU executive body here in Brussels, they appointed an expert panel to give recommendations,

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