Central Bank of Malta welcomes Eurosystem common stance for climate change-related investments

The Central Bank of Malta has come out in support of Eurosystem’s new common stance on applying sustainable and responsible investment principles to their non-monetary policy portfolios.

The Eurosystem, which comprises the European Central Bank and the national central banks of the Member States whose currency is the euro, is the monetary authority of the euro area.

Central Bank of Malta Governor, Edward Scicluna celebrated that the decision “couldn’t have come at a better time for [Malta’s] Central Bank since [it has] been recently working on a similar strategy for [its] investments.”

“Joint public procurement of investment advice is beneficial to all central banks but especially so for small country ones”, he said. 

“The common stance will help Eurosystem members to increase the awareness and understanding of climate risks while promoting climate-related disclosures”, Malta’s Central Bank believes. 

According to the European Central Bank (ECB), the common stance will help all Eurosystem members to contribute to the transition to a low-carbon economy and to EU climate goals.

It will also increase the awareness and understanding of climate risks while promoting climate-related disclosures.

The Eurosystem aims to start making annual climate-related disclosures for these types of portfolios within the next two years, using the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures as the initial framework and reporting, as a minimum, in the category of metrics and targets. 

Indeed, it says, several Eurosystem central banks already make climate-related disclosures for some of their non-monetary policy portfolios.

The ECB emphasised that while Eurosystem members are solely responsible for their non-monetary policy portfolios, they have agreed to continue to work jointly on the common stance and its implementation to harmonise approaches.