The Green Claims Directive
On 26 March 2024, the EU Directive 2024/825, which concerns "empowering consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair practices and through better information" came into force. It amends Directives 2005/29/EC (unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices) and 2011/83/EU (consumer rights).
The objective of the recent directive is to create a set of rules as uniform as possible within the EU for the protection of consumers and the environment: in fact, it introduces specific rules aimed at combating unfair commercial practices that mislead consumers and prevent them from making informed purchasing choices, such as practices associated with premature obsolescence of goods, misleading environmental claims ("greenwashing"), misleading information about the social characteristics of products or businesses of economic operators, or non-transparent and non-credible sustainability labels.
First, a commercial practice that contains false information including "environmental or social characteristics" and "circularity aspects, such as durability, reparability or recyclability" is acknowledged as misleading (amending Art. 6 para. 1 of Directive 2005/29/EC). Again, expressly included among the misleading commercial practices referred to in Art. 6 para. 2 of Directive 2005/29/EC "making an environmental claim related to future environmental performance without clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments set out in a detailed and realistic implementation plan that includes measurable and time-bound targets and other relevant elements necessary to support its implementation, such as allocation of resources, and that is regularly verified by an independent third party expert, whose findings are made available to consumers" and " advertising benefits to consumers that are irrelevant and do not result from any feature of the product or business".
New practices were then introduced to the black list of misleading business practices in Annex I of Directive 2005/29/EC, such as exhibiting a sustainability label not based on a certification system, making a generic environmental claim where the economic operator is unable to demonstrate their performance excellence, asserting on the basis of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions etc.
With specific reference to sustainability labels, the display of such signs is prohibited unless they are based on a certification system or established by public authorities (e.g., Made Green in Italy). Before exhibiting a sustainability label, the economic operator must ensure that such a label meets minimum conditions of transparency and credibility, including the existence of objective monitoring of compliance with the requirements of the system, carried out by third parties.
As for generic "green claims" (e.g., "environmentally friendly," etc.), they are generally prohibited unless the operator can demonstrate acknowledged excellence in relevant environmental performance.
Member states will have to implement the directive by September 27, 2026, although it should be noted that some of the misleading practices referred to in the new legislation are already punished by the AGCM today as they are deemed to be violations of the provisions of our consumer code on misleading advertising.