The Council of the EU has agreed on new rules to deal with Greenwashing in claims about ecological products

The European Council announced today that it has reached agreement on a series of proposals to protect consumers from greenwashing, introducing requirements that force companies justify and verify claims and labels regarding the environmental properties of their products and services.

The agreement sets out the Council's position for negotiations with the European Parliament on the European Commission's directive on ecological claims. The Commission introduced the directive in March 2023 following a recent study which found that more than half of EU companies' environmental claims were vague or misleading, with forty percent of them completely unfounded. The Commission's proposal includes minimum requirements for businesses to justify, report and verify their environmental claims, and calls for independent verification and scientific evidence to support voluntary claims. The Directive also deals with the dissemination of private environmental labels and introduces requirements for their reliability, transparency, independent verification and regular review. New brands will only be allowed if they demonstrate higher environmental ambitions than current systems.

This directive is part of the European Commission's package of consumer-oriented proposals on the environment and circular economy, which also includes ecodesign regulations, updates to the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) and the Consumer Rights Directive (CRD) to include the green transformation and aspects related to the circular economy, as well as support for repairs (right to repair).

One of the key elements of the directive, as proposed in the Council's position, is the use of compensation through carbon credits for climate-related claims such as "carbon neutral" or "net zero". The Commission required the separation of offsets from the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the specification of whether the offsets relate to the reduction or elimination of emissions. However, the Council distinguishes between "offset claims", which use carbon credits to offset a share of emissions, and "contribution claims", which use carbon credits to support climate action. Offset claims must demonstrate a net zero goal, show progress toward decarbonization, and disclose the percentage of total emissions that have been offset.

Parliament's position, adopted in March 2024, is stricter and bans environmental claims based solely on carbon offsets, allowing companies to advertise these schemes only if they have reduced emissions as much as possible and used offsets only for residual emissions.

The Council also provides more flexibility than the Commission's proposals by allowing independent third-party experts to verify environmental claims and introducing a new procedure to exempt certain types of explicit environmental claims from third-party verification. These exemptions apply to eligible companies that demonstrate compliance with the new rules through technical documentation and to labeling systems regulated by EU or national legislation, provided they meet EU standards. In addition, eco-labelling schemes will be exempted from verification if they are recognized officially in a Member State and comply with the new rules according to the Council's position.

Alain Maron, Brussels-Capital Region Government Minister responsible for Climate Change, Environment, Energy and Participatory Democracy, said after the EU Council's announcement:

"Today we reached an important agreement in the fight against greenwashing by establishing rules for clear, sufficient and evidence-based information about the environmental properties of products and services. Our goal is to help European citizens make well-informed environmental decisions." (Co2AI)