MEPs’ determination to empower consumers to play an active role in the green transition by providing better information on the durability and reparability of products, combating premature obsolescence and banning unsubstantiated green claims (greenwashing) was evident in a late debate on Tuesday 9 May.
The outcome of Thursday’s vote leaves no doubt that Parliament will endorse the report by Biljana Borzan (S&D, Croatian), which was adopted almost unanimously in March by Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) (see EUROPE 13151/10). The debate, originally scheduled for April (see EUROPE 13164/21), confirmed the MEPs’ willingness to go further than the European Commission’s March proposal to adapt EU consumer protection legislation (Consumer Rights and Unfair Commercial Practices Directives) to the requirements of the ecological transition.
“We are rewriting the rules to make the industry more transparent, greener, and consumer friendly. This will make it easier for citizens to make informed choices when shopping. Together with all the political groups, we have worked on this”.
These rules include a ban on generic, non-evidence-based environmental claims such as ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘natural’, ‘biodegradable’, ‘climate neutral’ or ‘eco’. Furthermore, companies will no longer be able to present carbon offsetting as an asset, the rapporteur stressed.
“To make it easier for consumers to identify and buy products that are more sustainable, we will introduce new mandatory labelling that will cover the legal guarantee of conformity and its voluntary extension in the form of a commercial guarantee of durability. If a TV manufacturer provides a 2-year legal warranty and an additional 2-year commercial durability warranty, this TV will be labelled ‘2+2’”.
In addition, if the competitor does not offer a commercial guarantee of durability, this labelling will be ‘2+0’, which will promote competition between producers, according to Ms Borzan.
She also cited the strengthening of the certification system for durability labels, including a complaints system for non-compliance, ensuring that offending labels are withdrawn.
The obligation for producers to market only products designed to be compatible with consumables, such as ink cartridges, for example, is also a requirement of the report.
“We want more money in people’s wallets and less valuable resources in the bin”, the rapporteur summarised.
Along the same lines, Edina Tóth (non-attached, Hungarian), rapporteur for the European Parliament Committee on the Environment (ENVI), said she “fully supports” the report. “More and more consumers are trying to buy greener products, but their efforts will be in vain if companies in the markets make empty promises, a phenomenon that has unfortunately been growing in recent years”, she said. She added: “Let’s be greener together and put an end, together, to the programmed obsolescence of products and the bad practice of greenwashing”.
The EU Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, thanked Parliament for its support. He recalled that this proposal “is part of a wider legislative package to stimulate sustainable consumption, covering the design and use phases”.
With the regulatory framework proposed by the Commission at the end of March to combat misleading environmental claims and greenwashing by setting minimum requirements and common criteria for the substantiation and communication of ‘green’ claims by companies (see EUROPE 13147/6), the revision of consumer protection legislation “will strengthen the fight against greenwashing by prohibiting practices that mislead consumers about the real sustainability of products and stimulate competition”, Mr Reynders stressed.
On Wednesday, the consumer organisation Test-Achats published an analysis showing that for 13 food products studied sold in supermarkets, the ‘CO2 neutral’ claim is misleading.
To see Test-Achats’ analysis (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/6th (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)