The fight against greenwashing is gaining momentum – first detailed rules for Green Claims are coming
- LEKKER Partners
- Jan 19, 2024
- 3 min read
Presented by the Commission in March 2022, the original proposal for a directive on empowering consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair practices was adopted by the EU Parliament with some amendments and additions. This is the first step towards detailed regulation in the EU regarding voluntary environmental claims, i.e. environmental advertising.
General claims such as "environmentally friendly", "biodegradable" etc. will be banned. Such generic environmental claims should be prohibited when recognised excellent environmental performance cannot be demonstrated. The directive defines this as an environmental performance compliant with Regulation (EC) No 66/2010 on the EU-Eco Label or with national or regional EN ISO 14024 type I ecolabelling schemes officially recognised in the Member States, or top environmental performance in accordance with other applicable Union law.
The claim "biodegradable", for example, would not be permitted as there are no specific requirements for biodegradability in the EU Ecolabel criteria. The regulations also include images that give the impression that a product has a positive or no harmful impact on the environment - here too, it is important to take a closer look!
In future, sustainability labels will only be permitted if they are based on a certification system or have been established by government bodies.
The addition to the blacklist introduced by the EU Parliament is particularly noteworthy. In future, environmental claims suggesting that the product has a neutral, reduced or even positive environmental impact will be banned if they are based on compensation solutions - in a nutshell claims that are currently the subject of legal proceedings in Germany. In future, claims such as "climate-neutral" or "CO2-neutral" will no longer be permitted if they are based on compensation solutions such as reforestation projects.
On the other hand, recital (9) states the following:
Such claims should only be allowed when they are based on the actual lifecycle impact of the product in question, and not based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions outside the product’s value chain, as the former and the latter are not equivalent. Such a prohibition should not prevent companies from advertising their investments in environmental initiatives, including carbon credit projects, as long as they provide such information in a way that is not misleading and that complies with the requirements laid down in Union law.
It remains to be seen how this demarcation can be achieved.
In this respect, this ban also contradicts the proposal of the Green Claims Directive from March 2023, which stipulates that environmental claims based on offsetting measures are possible, provided that they contain certain additional information, such as the extent to which the claims are based on offsetting and whether these are attributable to emission reductions or removals of greenhouse gases. Whether this rule will be upheld in the proposal of the Green Claims Directive remains to be seen.
Considering that sustainability labeling in the form of a common label for food is also currently being discussed, it once again shows how complex the verification and use of environmental claims can become in the future.
First of all, we need to wait for the implementation of the Directive on empowering consumers for the green transition in the member states. They have two years to do so, which means that the application of these rules are likely to be applied in 2026.
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