EU Green Claims Directive Proposal How should teams handle comparative environmental claims?

Start by identifying the comparison being made: product against product, trader against trader, current version against an older version, or a claim against a market alternative. Then check whether the evidence uses an equivalent basis on both sides. The Green Claims proposal adds comparative-claim requirements on top of the general substantiation rules: equivalent information, equivalent data generation or sourcing, equivalent value-chain coverage, equivalent environmental impact coverage, and equivalent assumptions.

A claim should not compare a narrow measurement on one side with a broader measurement on the other. For example, a climate comparison that counts only direct impacts for one trader but direct and indirect impacts for another is not a reliable like-for-like comparison. A life-cycle comparison that excludes a material stage for one product can also mislead unless the limitation is justified and transparent.

For product comparisons, define the function being compared before looking at the environmental metric. The older UCPD compliance criteria for environmental claims already warn that comparative advertising should compare products serving the same function and should use the same methods and assumptions. That remains a practical screen for Green Claims work: if the products are not substitutable for the consumer purpose claimed, the environmental comparison can be technically precise but still commercially misleading.

For company or trader comparisons, avoid comparing different organisational boundaries. A trader-level claim such as 'lower emissions than competitors' needs a clear boundary for operations, value-chain categories, geography, time period, and data quality. If the evidence only supports a product-line, facility, market, or activity-level result, the public wording should stay at that narrower level.

The substantiation file should let a reviewer reconstruct the comparison without guessing. Keep the claim text, the comparison set, the method, the data sources, the calculations, the assumptions, the boundary choices, and the consumer-facing explanation together. If the claim is about an improvement against an older product or a trader no longer active in the market, the Green Claims proposal expects the substantiation to explain effects on other relevant environmental impacts and to state the baseline year.

Do not infer simplified-route eligibility from a comparison sounding straightforward. Council Article 3a(3) excludes comparative claims from its future implementing-act branch for less complex claims. Its other Specific Technical Documentation branches are defined separately. Record the exact branch and eligibility conditions, and otherwise plan the full comparison file and verification route; these remain draft mechanisms.

The Green Claims proposal is designed to complement the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive framework rather than replace it. Directive (EU) 2024/825 adds rules for environmental claims and for services that compare products. From 27 September 2026, a comparison service's method, compared products and suppliers, and measures for keeping information current are material information under national implementing rules. A comparative claim can therefore lack proposal-stage Green Claims substantiation and still be misleading under current or amended UCPD rules.

The consumer-facing presentation matters as much as the back-end calculation. A qualified claim such as '30 percent lower use-phase electricity than our 2021 model under test method X' is easier to support than a broad 'greener than competitors' message. The public wording should show the metric, basis, period, limitation, and where the substantiation can be found. If those qualifiers would make the headline materially different, the unqualified headline is the risk.