EU Green Claims Directive Penalties and Enforcement

The Commission proposal builds enforcement around Member State competent authorities. Member States would designate one or more authorities responsible for applying and enforcing the directive, define responsibilities where several authorities exist, and notify the Commission and other Member States of those authorities and their areas of competence.

Those authorities would need inspection and enforcement powers. The proposal lists powers to access documents and data, require information, start investigations or proceedings, require remedies or other action to end infringements, adopt injunctive relief where appropriate, and impose penalties under the directive's penalty article.

The proposal does not jump straight from a weak claim to a fine. It would require competent authorities to conduct regular checks of explicit environmental claims and environmental labelling schemes, evaluate detected infringements, and require corrective action when substantiation, communication, or labelling-scheme requirements are not met.

The Commission proposal framed corrective action as bringing the claim or scheme into compliance within 30 days or ceasing use of the non-compliant claim. The Council general approach changes that wording toward corrective action without delay where the competent authority considers it necessary and appropriate, and expressly extends corrective action logic to environmental labelling scheme owners and traders displaying labels.

The Commission proposal would leave Member States to lay down national penalty rules for infringements of national measures adopted under the directive, but it sets EU-level principles. Penalties must be effective, proportionate, and dissuasive, and authorities should consider factors such as gravity, duration, intent or negligence, mitigation, financial strength, economic benefit, previous infringements, and cross-border penalty information where available.

The proposal also identifies sanction types at EU level: fines designed to remove economic benefit and increase for repeat infringements, confiscation of revenues from relevant transactions, and temporary exclusion from public procurement and public funding. The Council general approach keeps the penalty principle but marks the listed criteria as non-exhaustive and indicative where applicable, adds environmental labelling scheme owners to several penalty criteria, and removes or brackets some detailed sanction-list text in the negotiating document.

The proposal uses ex-ante verification to support enforcement, not to replace it. Member States would set up procedures for verifying substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims and environmental labelling schemes. A verifier would check the claim or label before it is made public or displayed, and may issue a certificate of conformity where requirements are met.

Both the Commission proposal and Council general approach are clear that a certificate does not prejudge or prejudice assessment under Directive 2005/29/EC by national authorities or courts. Council text also adds more operational detail around certificate notification and management through IMI, public certificate lists, verifier access, and competent authority action where a certificate is annulled or withdrawn.

The Green Claims proposal is designed as lex specialis for substantiation and communication of voluntary environmental claims, while the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive remains the broader consumer-law framework. The Commission proposal states that microenterprises exempted from Green Claims substantiation and communication requirements would still remain within UCPD scope.

The Council general approach makes the overlap more explicit. It says the Green Claims requirements apply on top of Directive 2005/29/EC and prevail for their specific aspects in case of conflict, but national authorities or courts can still find a practice unfair under UCPD provisions even where the Green Claims requirements or simplified procedure are met. Directive (EU) 2024/825 also amends the UCPD to add green-transition protections, including restrictions on generic environmental claims and certain offset-based climate claims.

An enforcement-ready file should make the authority, verifier, and UCPD overlap visible without guessing national procedure. For each explicit environmental claim or label reference, keep the claim text, publication channel, trader or scheme owner, substantiation summary, communication material, verifier/certificate status, and any corrective action or withdrawal record.

The file should also identify which official text supports the enforcement assumption: Commission proposal text, Council general approach text, Directive (EU) 2024/825, or UCPD guidance. That distinction matters because the proposal and Council text are not the same as a final national penalty regime.