EU Green Claims Directive proposal Microenterprise and scope exclusions

Do not state this as final law. The Commission Q&A on the original proposal used a shorthand description - fewer than 10 employees and less than EUR 2 million turnover - and said those microenterprises would be exempt unless they chose to use the rules.

The Council general approach is different. It refers to the microenterprise definition in Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and gives those enterprises a later application date for listed substantiation, communication, simplified-procedure, verifier, and related obligations. The Recommendation's full test uses fewer than 10 annual work units and an annual turnover or annual balance-sheet ceiling of EUR 2 million, with partner and linked-enterprise data included where required. That is not a permanent exclusion for every claim made by a small business.

For each scope decision, record the legislative text, enterprise-size calculation, and whether the conclusion concerns a proposed Green Claims 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 the substantiation information. A trader that exactly reproduces a claim already communicated to consumers is treated differently from a producer or another trader that creates 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.