EU Taxonomy Regulation What is in scope for Article 8 disclosures

Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 applies to undertakings that are subject to the obligation to publish non-financial information under Article 19a or Article 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU. Those undertakings must include information on how and to what extent their activities are associated with economic activities that qualify as environmentally sustainable.

The practical scope decision should begin with the reporting entity and consolidation boundary. If the undertaking is in scope, the next question is which disclosure route applies: non-financial undertaking KPIs under Annexes I and II of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178, or the financial undertaking rules for asset managers, credit institutions, investment firms, and insurance or reinsurance undertakings.

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/73 did not remove that entity-level scope test. From 1 January 2026 it added KPI-specific assessment relief: a non-financial undertaking may omit eligibility and alignment assessment for activities whose cumulative turnover or CapEx is below 10% of the respective KPI denominator, with a similar rule for OpEx where OpEx is material. The omitted amounts stay in the denominator and must be reported separately as non-material.

For financial undertakings, Article 7(9) provides temporary conditional relief from detailed reporting through 31 December 2027. Commission Notice C/2026/2558 explains that this opt-out is all or nothing and cannot be used if the undertaking makes a Taxonomy-alignment claim during the financial year covered by the report. The undertaking must also include the prescribed statement in its management report.

For non-financial undertakings, Article 8(2) points to the proportion of turnover, capital expenditure, and operating expenditure related to assets or processes associated with environmentally sustainable economic activities. The Disclosures Delegated Act then requires those disclosures as specified in Annex I and presented using the templates in Annex II.

For financial undertakings, turnover, CapEx, and OpEx do not describe lending, investment, insurance, or similar financial activities in the same way. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2178 therefore provides separate KPI methodologies for asset managers, credit institutions, investment firms, and insurance or reinsurance undertakings.

The Disclosures Delegated Act requires additional disclosures accompanying the KPIs to appear in the same part of the non-financial statement as the indicators, or to be cross-referenced from that part. The same Article 8 provisions also require KPIs to cover the previous annual reporting period and to use the same currency as the financial statements.

The evidence file should tie the in-scope entity, financial statement currency, previous reporting period, chosen KPI route, and cross-references to the non-financial statement into one reviewable record.

Keep evidence that explains why the entity is in scope, which undertaking type was used for the KPI framework, and how the disclosure record connects to the annual reporting package. A useful record should be readable by sustainability, finance, legal, and audit reviewers without relying on undocumented assumptions.

For financial undertakings, the record should also capture scope exclusions and numerator limits where relevant, such as the common Article 7 treatment for exposures to central governments, central banks, supranational issuers, derivatives, and undertakings not obliged to publish non-financial information.