Through the EU taxonomy is set a common classification system for sustainable economic activities. In this perspective, as pointed out by the EU Commission, “it plays an important role in helping the EU scale up sustainable investment, by creating security for investors, protecting private investors from greenwashing, helping companies become more climate-friendly and mitigating market fragmentation.”20 The Taxonomy Regulation reaffirms that the involvement of the economic and financial world in the actions aiming at rationalizing the ecological transition stems from the need to make provision for “an effective way of channelling private investments into sustainable activities21” thus avoiding, inter alia, greenwashing, which refers to “the practice of gaining an unfair competitive advantage by marketing a financial product as environmentally friendly, when in fact basic environmental standards have not been met.”22 The EU legislator has established the technical screening criteria for determining, uniformly across the EU, the conditions under which an economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and for determining whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to any of the other environmental objectives. According to the existing legal framework, an economic activity shall qualify as environmentally sustainable where that economic activity meets the following four conditions: 1) contributes substantially to one or more of the environmental objectives set out in Article 9;23 2) does not significantly harm any of the environmental objectives set out in Article 9;24 3) is carried out in compliance with the minimum safeguards laid down in Article 18;25 4) complies with technical screening criteria that have been established by the Commission.26 20 European Commission, EU Taxonomy for sustainable activities, available at https://finance.ec.europa.eu/ sustainable-finance/tools-and-standards/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en (last accessed 3 June 2025). 21 Recital 11 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852. 22 Recital 11 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852. On this point, see I. Costanzo, cit., par. 2.1. 23 Article 3a, Regulation (EU) 2020/852. 24 Article 3b, Regulation (EU) 2020/852. 25 Article 3c, Regulation (EU) 2020/852. It concerns labour standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. 26 Article 3d, Regulation (EU) 2020/852. 115 THE “DO NO SIGNIFICANT HARM” (DNSH) PRINCIPLE IN THE MULTILEVEL LEGAL SYSTEM
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