Search every question across sub-FAQs

Directive (EU) 2024/825 adds environmental-claim concepts and specific greenwashing practices to the UCPD framework. It defines an environmental claim broadly as a non-mandatory commercial message or representation that states or implies a positive, zero, lower, or improving environmental impact for a product, product category, brand, or trader.

For day-to-day claim review, the most important change is that several practices move from broad case-by-case risk into named UCPD controls. A generic environmental claim is prohibited when the trader cannot demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim. A sustainability label is prohibited if it is not based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority. A future environmental performance claim is treated as misleading unless it is supported by clear, objective, publicly available, verifiable commitments in a detailed and realistic implementation plan, with measurable and time-bound targets and independent third-party verification.

The Green Claims proposal is the more specific layer for voluntary explicit environmental claims and environmental labelling schemes. The Commission proposal describes it as complementing the UCPD changes by adding rules on substantiation, communication, and verification. The Council general approach likewise frames the Green Claims text as complementing Directive (EU) 2024/825 and applying detailed rules to explicit environmental claims and environmental labels.

The practical distinction is: the UCPD, as amended by Directive (EU) 2024/825, identifies unfair or misleading practices, including blacklist-style prohibitions. The Green Claims proposal would require a trader that generates a covered explicit environmental claim to support it with an assessment, communicate specified information, and have the substantiation and communication checked before the claim or label is put on the market, subject to the proposal's scope and exceptions.

Check both layers when a voluntary business-to-consumer message is explicit and environmental. Examples include packaging recycled-content claims, bee-friendly or nature-positive claims, carbon compensated ride claims, claims to reduce CO2 by a future date, product-level climate neutrality claims, and labels or trust marks that imply environmental superiority.

Start with the UCPD as amended by Directive (EU) 2024/825: is the claim generic, future-looking, whole-product or whole-business when the evidence is narrower, offset-based, or tied to a sustainability label? Then check the Green Claims proposal lens: if the claim is in scope and not already governed by more specific Union rules, what substantiation, communication, labelling-scheme, and verification evidence would be needed before publication?

Do not wait for the Green Claims file to be final before cleaning up claims that Directive (EU) 2024/825 already targets. Generic environmental language, weak labels, offset-based product climate neutrality claims, and unsupported future-performance claims already have a clearer UCPD risk profile under the adopted directive.

For Green Claims-specific controls, avoid presenting proposal details as settled final law. Use them as a design baseline for evidence quality: claim files should identify the exact claim, the environmental characteristic or impact, the product or trader boundary, the data and method used, relevant trade-offs, the communication text, and whether a verifier or certification-scheme check would be needed under the proposal/general-approach text.

Do not state this as final law. The Commission Q&A on the original proposal said microenterprises with fewer than 10 employees and less than EUR 2 million turnover were exempt from the proposal's obligations unless they chose to use the rules.

The Council general approach is different. It says microenterprises within Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC would receive a later application date for listed substantiation, communication, simplified-procedure, verifier, and related obligations. That is not the same as saying every microenterprise claim is permanently outside the regime.

For content, intake, or product-review workflows, record which legislative text you are applying, the enterprise-size basis used, and whether the statement is about a Green Claims proposal obligation or a separate unfair-commercial-practices risk.

The Council text frames scope around voluntary explicit environmental claims by traders about products or about traders, plus environmental labelling schemes and corresponding environmental labels, in business-to-consumer commercial practices.

That means a scope check should start with the communication, not only with the company size. Ask whether the statement is voluntary, explicit, environmental, directed at consumers, and about a product, service, trader, activity, or environmental label. Council recitals distinguish written or oral explicit claims from implicit claims such as imagery or colour, which remain addressed through Directive 2005/29/EC rather than the Green Claims proposal's explicit-claim rules.

The Council text also narrows responsibility by role. The trader generating the explicit environmental claim should possess substantiation information; traders merely exactly replicating claims already communicated to consumers are treated differently from a producer or another trader creating the B2C claim.

The Council text excludes explicit environmental claims, environmental labels, and environmental labelling schemes when other Union legislation already lays down specific rules for their substantiation, communication, verification, assessment, accounting, or mandatory and non-mandatory consumer information.

Examples in the Council text include EU Ecolabel, organic production, energy labelling, and ecodesign-related rules. The recitals also point to financial-services sustainability information, certain sustainability reporting under accounting-law standards, and offers such as green loans or green insurance terms as outside the Green Claims proposal's rules.

The operational point is not to label a product category as wholly outside Green Claims. A single product can carry different messages: an organic certification statement may be governed by organic rules, while a separate voluntary B2C claim on detergent packaging, a website, or advertising may still need a Green Claims or unfair-commercial-practices analysis.

Use a narrow answer: "This is a proposal-stage Green Claims scope issue. Check whether the communication is a voluntary explicit environmental claim or environmental label in B2C trade, whether another EU rule specifically regulates that claim or label, and whether the trader is a microenterprise under the text being applied."

Then state the result by text version. Under the Commission proposal materials, microenterprises were described as exempt unless they wished to use the rules. Under the Council general approach, microenterprises receive later application of specified obligations. Neither source supports presenting a settled, already-applicable Green Claims deadline or a blanket exclusion for every environmental statement by a small trader.

Separate the claim by its object. A product or service claim says something about the environmental impact, aspect, characteristic, or performance of a product, a product group, a service, a component, packaging, production method, use phase, or end-of-life stage. A company claim says something about the trader itself, the organisation, a business activity, a site, operations, a value chain, or future company performance.

Do not let one evidence file silently cover both. The Council text requires the substantiation assessment to specify whether the claim relates to the whole product, part of a product, certain aspects of a product, all activities of a trader, or only a certain part or aspect of those activities. If the public wording crosses that boundary, narrow the wording or expand the assessment before publication.

For a product or service claim, evidence must fit the product boundary being advertised. The assessment should rely on recognised scientific evidence, accurate information, and relevant standards or methods, and it must show that the environmental characteristics claimed are relevant and significant, particularly from a life-cycle perspective.

A product claim cannot cherry-pick one favourable attribute if that wording suggests broader environmental performance. If the use phase is one of the most relevant life-cycle stages, the Council text also expects consumer communication to explain how the product should be used to achieve the expected environmental performance.

For a company or trader claim, the evidence scope follows the trader activity being presented to consumers. A claim about the whole organisation needs substantiation for the relevant overall activities; a claim about one division, site, fleet, store format, procurement programme, or future target should say so clearly and keep evidence limited to that boundary.

The Council text treats trader claims as explicit environmental claims too. That means the company cannot reuse a product footprint or product label as proof of a broad organisation claim unless the product evidence actually covers the trader activity, environmental characteristics, and significant impacts being communicated.

Publish only the claim that the evidence can support. The consumer-facing wording should be clear and comprehensible, identify the environmental characteristics covered, and avoid implying a broader product or company benefit than the substantiation assessment covers.

The most common failure is boundary drift: product evidence is used to imply a company-wide benefit, or company-level initiatives are used to imply that every product or service is environmentally better. Treat those as separate claims unless the same evidence genuinely covers both objects, all significant impacts, and the same comparison baseline.

Build the workflow around the claim, not around a generic compliance calendar. The Commission proposal says explicit environmental claims would need substantiation and ex-ante verification before they are used in commercial communications. The Council general approach keeps that structure but changes some drafting, including references to claims being generated by the trader and environmental labels or schemes being made available.

The first gate is therefore scope and claim wording: identify the exact explicit environmental claim, the product or trader it concerns, whether another EU regime already sets specific rules, and whether the claim is ordinary verification or a Council-proposed simplified-procedure case handled through Specific Technical Documentation.

The verifier workflow starts with a substantiation file that can be checked against the proposed requirements. For ordinary explicit environmental claims, the Commission proposal says the assessment should rely on recognised scientific evidence and state-of-the-art technical knowledge, identify significant impacts from a life-cycle perspective, cover relevant environmental aspects, state whether the claim applies to the whole product or trader or only part of it, address legal-baseline claims, trade-offs, offsets where relevant, and use accurate primary or secondary information.

For comparative claims, the dossier should also show that compared products or traders use equivalent information, data generation or sourcing, value-chain coverage, impact coverage, and assumptions. If the Council simplified procedure applies, the record is not a full verifier package; it is the Specific Technical Documentation required before the claim is public.

Under the proposal, the verifier is not an decision owner. The Commission proposal describes a third-party conformity assessment body accredited under Regulation (EC) No 765/2008. The Council general approach also refers to accredited conformity assessment bodies for verification activities or EMAS environmental verifiers, and adds EN ISO/IEC 17029 compliance.

The verifier checks the nature and content of the claim against the relevant substantiation and communication requirements. If compliance is demonstrated, the verifier issues a certificate of conformity. The certificate supports cross-EU recognition by competent authorities, but it does not prevent national authorities or courts from assessing the claim under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

Keep the record set tied to the verifier decision. For ordinary verified claims, that means the claim version, substantiation assessment, verifier correspondence, certificate of conformity if issued, and consumer-facing summary or link material. The Commission proposal expects claim communication to include substantiation information such as covered aspects, underlying studies and calculations, how improvements are achieved, the certificate, and verifier contact details.

The Council text adds a stronger certificate-management trail: certificates, review certificates, withdrawals, and updates would be communicated through a public interface connected to IMI, with the Commission publishing an up-to-date list on the Single Digital Gateway. Council text also says certificates would be valid for a maximum period of five years and substantiation must be reviewed earlier if circumstances affect claim accuracy.

Do not lock implementation dates, forms, or certificate mechanics from this FAQ alone. The cited materials include the Commission proposal and the Council's 17 June 2024 general approach; those are not the final enacted Directive. The final obligations depend on adoption, publication, national transposition, and implementing acts for details such as certificate form and technical issuing or notification procedures.

Teams can still prepare useful records now: map claims, collect substantiation evidence, identify likely verifier inputs, and keep a versioned watchlist of text changes between the Commission proposal, Parliament position, Council general approach, and the final Directive when available.