Interinstitutional negotiations on the Green Claims Directive began on Tuesday 28 January. This directive aims to combat greenwashing by obliging companies to specify their claims concerning the environmental footprint of their products and services.
The directive sets minimum requirements for the substantiation, communication and verification of explicit environmental claims. Any claim will have to be verified by independent experts before being published.
“New rules were urgently needed, as more than half of advertising claims about the alleged positive environmental aspects of products or companies in the EU are inaccurate, misleading or unverified”, said Delara Burkhardt (S&D, German), Parliament’s co-rapporteur on the directive, together with Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe, Italian).
Germany has identified two potential sticking points around the prior verification of environmental claims and claims relating to the “alleged climate neutrality of companies”.
Ex ante verification. While the Council of the EU also defends the need for prior verification, the German MEP highlights the “exemptions” it allows professionals and warns that “the European Parliament will keep a close watch to ensure that any simplification or exemption does not create loopholes through which greenwashing can continue”.
However, Sandro Gozi pointed out that, “unlike the Council”, Parliament is proposing to facilitate the verification process for businesses by limiting it to 30 days. Like the EU Council, Parliament wants to provide relief for SMEs and micro-businesses.
Carbon credits. The European Parliament also wants to outlaw environmental claims that assert a product’s neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment based on the use of carbon credits. “Advertising climate neutrality via CO₂ offsetting is often misleading: most people understand it as a complete reduction in emissions”, said Delara Burkhardt.
Where “the Council simply wants to increase transparency in this respect”, she deplored, Parliament wants to limit compensation for climate neutrality claims to residual emissions.
Limiting the use of dangerous substances, penalties, access to justice and the timetable for implementation will be other key points, according to Sandro Gozi.
The Polish Presidency did not wish to “go into detail” after this introductory trilogue. The next trilogue will be held on 24 April. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)