GOVERNING LANGUAGE: The EU Taxonomy and Private Actors in Ireland

Abstract

In 2020 the European Union’s Taxonomy for sustainable activities entered into force. This regulation provides a classification system for economic activities that can be labelled as ‘environmentally sustainable’, which has had huge ramifications for how financial and non-financial actors report upon their environmental performance. The Taxonomy is seen as a key step in transitioning the internal EU market towards one that can meet the objectives set out within the European Green Deal, with the regulation facilitating the flow of capital investment towards environmentally sustainable activities. The literature review upon this topic details how previously an absence of a shared understanding of what this entailed had undermined the field of ‘sustainable finance’ and how the Taxonomy aims to correct this. Following an identification of a lack of academic research around the Taxonomy, this thesis utilises the theoretical framework of large-scale collective action in order to provide an exploratory study into how well the Taxonomy is constructed as a third-party intervention. Relevant stressors and facilitators are identified and analysed through a policy analysis of the regulation itself, and semi-structured interviews with Irish actors. The analysis identifies key facilitators for collective action targeted by the Taxonomy as communication, reputation and power. Stressors of salience targeted by the regulation include lack of accountability, risk and uncertainty. The paper also identifies three novel stressors as being generated by the regulation; complexity, ambiguity and policy overlap.