- The UNE 0076 Specification provides a guide for the self-assessment of the Do No Significant Harm principle (DNSH), which is both useful for entities that intend to demonstrate compliance, and for those who are responsible for validation or verification.
- This document compiles the content of the existing guidelines, provides details on specific aspects and adds examples of self-assessment to facilitate their practical implementation.
- The DNSH principle is a necessary requirement in order to access European Next Generation funds, which will be providing 140,000 million euros in funding to organisations in the coming years, within the Spanish Government's Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
Madrid, 16 March 2023 - The Spanish Association for Standardization (UNE), today held a meeting at which experts presented the new UNE 0076 Specification, which provides a guide for the self-assessment of the Do No Significant Harm principle (DNSH), which is both useful for entities that intend to demonstrate compliance, and for those who are responsible for validation or verification. Moreover, funding programmes are increasingly demanding this principle, which makes it a key element for a multitude of organisations. This new standard will be available on 30 March on the UNE website.
The DNSH principle contains a series of criteria that seeks to avoid causing significant harm to the environment and its compliance is a necessary requirement in order to access European Next Generation funds, which will be providing 140,000 million euros to Spanish organisations over the next few years, within the Spanish Government's Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
This new standard compiles the content of the existing guidelines, provides details on specific aspects and includes a series of recommendations to facilitate organisations' work when preparing a self-assessment report on compliance with the DNSH principle. The following aspects of the document are included: The scope of the compliance assessment, the justification of the climate or environmental contribution of the measure, the criteria included in the taxonomy regulation (Regulation (EU) 2021/241) and its delegated acts, the specific criteria of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, the annexes of the decision to execute the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and operational provisions; Channels for analysing exceptions applicable to ineligible activities and processing non-low impact activities.
The document also adds examples of self-assessment for specific cases such as R&D&I actions, non-low impact actions; low impact actions and actions that contribute to one of the environmental objectives.
The UNE 0076 Specification has been drawn up within the framework of a working group consisting of sector associations, large companies, public entities, compliance assessment bodies and consultants and universities, who have applied it in their particular field and enriched with the experience gained after the assessment and verification of the DNSH principle. In addition, although it is not mandatory for UNE Specifications, the process was submitted to public consultation with the aim of collecting as many contributions as possible from any of the interested parties.
Standardisation is an effective way of responding to the challenges facing society and industry, harmonising best practices and providing reliable and consensual tools to legislators and public and private organisations.
Th meeting was attended by Paloma García (UNE); Adelaide Sacristán (COTEC Foundation for Innovation); Daniel Gallego and María Luisa López (ACIE-Spanish Certification Agency); Iván Moya (UNE); Marcos Escudero (Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism); José Luis Ortiz (Airbus Defence and Space Spain); María Luisa Merchán (Grupo Tragsa); and Roberto Martinez (Polytechnic University of Madrid).
