EU Green Claims Directive Penalties and enforcement risk

No. Do not publish or rely on fixed EU-wide penalty amounts for the Green Claims Directive as if they were final law. The Commission proposal included penalty rules and examples of measures, while the Council general approach keeps the core principle that Member States would set penalties that are effective, proportionate, and dissuasive.

For planning, use the penalty principles that are common across the proposal materials: competent authorities look at the nature, gravity, extent, and duration of the infringement, whether conduct was intentional or negligent, the financial strength of the responsible person, benefits gained from the infringement, previous infringements, and relevant cross-border penalties where available.

The original Commission proposal went further than the Council general approach. It proposed fines that remove the economic benefit, confiscation of revenue or products, temporary exclusion from public procurement and public funding for up to 12 months, and, where Article 21 of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 applies, a maximum fine level of at least 4% of annual turnover in the Member State or Member States concerned. Those figures and measures are proposal text, not an adopted Green Claims penalty schedule; the Council's June 2024 text deleted the listed measures and 4% clause.

Directive (EU) 2024/825 matters because it amends the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which already applies to misleading business-to-consumer environmental claims. National measures applying from 27 September 2026 add specific concepts and blacklist practices, including sustainability labels not based on a qualifying certification scheme or public authority, generic environmental claims without recognised excellent environmental performance, whole-product or whole-business claims that concern only one aspect, and certain offset-based greenhouse-gas impact claims.

Green Claims penalty planning should not wait for a final Green Claims Directive. A claim can create risk under existing national UCPD rules if it is misleading, too broad, unsupported, or presented through a label that creates a false impression. The new Directive (EU) 2024/825 blacklist items add clearer rules from 27 September 2026; they do not create an EU-wide fixed fine for each claim.

Reduce risk by keeping claim-specific evidence before publication. The Commission materials describe voluntary consumer-facing green claims as needing substantiation and ex-ante verification, and they expect scientific evidence, relevant environmental impacts, and trade-offs to be identified.

Keep evidence in a form that a product, marketing, legal, sustainability, or customer-support reviewer can connect directly to the exact words, label, image, product scope, geography, and sales channel used in the claim.

For a live issue, preserve the sequence: record the complaint or authority request, freeze the challenged claim version and evidence, identify the responsible trader or scheme owner, assess every affected channel and market, complete any required correction or withdrawal, retain proof of completion, and keep the file open for a separate penalty or court decision.

The main mistake is treating penalties as a finance-only issue. Green Claims and UCPD exposure usually starts earlier, when a claim is drafted too broadly, reused in a new market, tied to an unsupported label, or separated from the evidence that substantiates it.

Teams should also avoid implying that one certificate, one life-cycle study, or one sustainability report automatically protects every future claim. The cited position is narrower: each claim needs evidence and communication review that matches the claim as consumers see it.