On 20 June 2025, the European Commission announced its intention to withdraw the proposal for a Green Claims Directive. This was prompted in part by concerns over the direction the trilogue was taking, particularly the possibility that the directive’s scope would be extended to cover approximately 30 million micro-enterprises. The Commission’s original proposal exempted micro-enterprises from most of the key obligations.

Current EU legal framework

The regulation of environmental claims is currently based on general consumer protection law, in particular the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which prohibits misleading claims. This directive was recently amended by the Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, which entered into force in March 2024. EU member states have two years to transpose the directive into national law (with the rules applying as of 27 September 2026). Under this directive, the rules regarding sustainability-related claims have been tightened.

The most important change relates to "blacklist practices", which are considered misleading. These include:

• making generic environmental claims (such as "environmentally friendly", "green", "ecological" or "bio-based") without demonstrable and recognised excellent environmental performance;
• presenting a claim as relating to an entire product or the trader’s entire business when it in fact concerns only a specific aspect or activity; and
• suggesting that a product has a neutral, reduced, or positive environmental impact based on greenhouse gas offsetting alone.

It is furthermore misleading to make claims about future environmental performance without having clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments. These commitments must be set out in a detailed and realistic implementation plan, including measurable and time-bound targets and other relevant elements necessary to support its implementation. The plan must be verified regularly by an independent third-party expert whose findings are made available to consumers.

When comparing products based on their environmental or circularity aspects such as durability, reparability or recyclability, consumers must be informed about the method of comparison, the products and suppliers involved, and the measures taken to ensure the information remains up to date. Failing to provide this information is considered a misleading omission.

Finally, private sustainability labels are prohibited unless they are either based on a certified scheme or established by a public authority.

Proposed Green Claims Directive

The proposed Green Claims Directive is intended primarily as a complement to the Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition.

It requires traders to clearly state which part of the product or business their green claim refers to and to base claims on widely recognised scientific evidence. The environmental performance must be significant from a life-cycle perspective and supported by a comprehensive assessment of all relevant environmental aspects. Claims cannot merely reflect compliance with existing legal requirements for products in a given category – they must indicate whether the product performs better than common market practice. Finally, if improving one environmental impact causes harm in another area, this must also be disclosed.

When making environmental claims that compare the impact of one product or company to another, specific conditions must be met. The comparison must rely on similar data and equivalent sources for environmental assessment. It should cover the entire value chain equally for all products or companies involved, apply a uniform methodology, and be based on consistent underlying assumptions.

All this information must be made accessible to consumers through a URL or QR code, or in physical form. This must also include the underlying studies, calculations or data used to assess and monitor the environmental impact.

The most far-reaching requirement is the mandatory verification by an independent verifier, which must take place before the environmental claims are first made. It is up to the member states to establish procedures for this. However, within 18 months after the directive's entry into force, the Commission will establish a simplified verification process for certain claims. This may include a presumption of conformity.

All these requirements also apply to environmental labels. And for those types of labels there are additional requirements concerning transparent and accessible information on ownership and decision-making, as well as procedures for handling non-compliance.

Green claims not to escape scrutiny

If the proposal for a Green Claims Directive were to be withdrawn, the most significant obligation to be dropped would be the prior verification requirement. The proposal also sets out stricter requirements for the substantiation and methodology of green claims, but these largely build on the standards already introduced by the Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition.

Given the increased enforcement efforts by public authorities such as the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets and by civil society organisations, as illustrated by the court case against KLM, it is clear that green claims will not escape scrutiny, with or without the Green Claims Directive.