Green Claims penalties and fines under the EU proposal

COM(2023) 166 is a legislative proposal and cannot provide a legal basis for imposing a Green Claims Directive fine. The Parliament Legislative Train records two trilogues in 2025, the Commission's announced intention to withdraw, cancellation of the third trilogue, and a blocked status. It also says the 2026 Commission Work Programme continues to list the proposal as pending.

A misleading environmental claim may still breach the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and national implementing law. Directive (EU) 2024/825 adds specific green-transition rules to that framework; Member States must apply their implementing measures from 27 September 2026. Actual exposure therefore depends on the law in force in the relevant Member State, the conduct, the date, and any cross-border enforcement mechanism.

Proposed Article 17 is framed as a Member State obligation. It would require national penalty rules for infringements of national provisions adopted under the directive; it would not publish a directly applicable EU schedule of fines for each type of green claim.

The penalty criteria focus on the infringement and the responsible actor: nature, gravity, extent, duration, intentional or negligent character, mitigation, financial strength, economic benefit, previous infringements, aggravating or mitigating factors, and penalties imposed elsewhere for the same cross-border infringement when that information is available through consumer-protection cooperation mechanisms.

The Commission proposal's detailed package also listed confiscation of revenue from transactions involving the relevant products and temporary exclusion for up to 12 months from public procurement and public funding, including tenders, grants, and concessions. The Council general approach deletes that detailed package, so none of those proposed sanction types is a settled Green Claims rule.

The draft enforcement design separates corrective action from penalties. Under the Council text's Article 15, competent authorities would first evaluate detected non-compliance and could require the trader, environmental labelling scheme owner, or label-displaying trader to correct the issue or stop using the non-compliant claim or label.

The Council recitals describe corrective action as a way to resolve non-compliance and a penalty as punitive. Changing a website, relabelling a product, or withdrawing a claim would not necessarily remove penalty exposure for an infringement that had already occurred.

The Commission proposal included a rule for fines imposed under Article 21 of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394: Member States would have to make the available maximum at least 4% of the trader's annual turnover in the Member State or Member States concerned. The text sets a floor for the statutory maximum in those coordinated consumer-protection cases. It does not require an authority to impose a 4% fine, and it does not apply that figure automatically to every unsupported claim.

The Council general approach deletes the Commission proposal's detailed Article 17(3) package from its negotiating text. It keeps the requirement for effective, proportionate, and dissuasive national penalties and makes the listed assessment criteria indicative and non-exhaustive. Only the Commission proposal contains the 4% wording.

Under the Council negotiating text, responsibility would depend on the actor and the infringement defined by future national implementing law. The trader generating an explicit environmental claim is central for substantiation; an environmental labelling scheme owner could be addressed for a non-compliant scheme or label; and a trader displaying a label could be required to correct communication failures.

Retailers or distributors that merely replicate existing claims are treated differently from traders that generate claims, but the Council recitals also note that corrective measures may be required from retailers once misleading practices have been established under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive framework.

A Green Claims penalty-readiness file should not guess fines. For planning against the draft texts, preserve the facts that proposed Articles 15 and 17 make relevant: the claim text, where it appeared, who generated or displayed it, substantiation status, verifier or certificate status where applicable, detected non-compliance, corrective action, mitigation, economic benefit if it can be determined, and cross-border footprint.

Use that evidence to answer three separate questions: whether the claim is non-compliant, what corrective measure is appropriate, and what penalty criteria a competent authority may consider.