EU Council backs simpler SFDR with three clear fund labels

On 24 June 2026, the EU Council agreed its negotiating position on a revised version of the SFDR, setting up talks with the European Parliament. The headline change: replacing the much-criticised Article 6, 8, and 9 classifications with three plainer fund categories — sustainable, transition, and ESG basics.

The reason matters for anyone communicating about funds. Investors and the press had been treating the SFDR article numbers as if they were product labels — so an “Article 9” fund got marketed as the gold standard. That was never the regulation’s intent, and the confusion fuelled exactly the Greenwashing worries SFDR was built to stop. Clearer category names, tied to what a fund actually does, are meant to make claims easier to verify against the EU Taxonomy.

For comms teams: this is still a Council position, not final law — Parliament negotiations come next, and the labels could shift. But it signals where the EU is heading, and any fund currently leaning on its “Article 8” or “Article 9” status in marketing should expect to re-explain itself under the new names.