At its daily press conference on Friday 20 June, the European Commission said it “wanted to withdraw the Directive on environmental claims” (see EUROPE 13567/13), ahead of the final trilogue on the subject scheduled for Monday 23 June. The statement is attributed to Maciek Berestecki, the European Commission’s spokesman on environmental issues.
The day before, the European People’s Party (EPP), the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Patriots for Europe (PfE) had each sent a letter to the European Commission calling for the Directive to be withdrawn.
“The Commission has the right of initiative to withdraw a legislative procedure on the basis of its own assessment”, explained Stefan de Keersmaecker, deputy spokesman for the European Commission.
The Green Claims Directive aims to provide a framework for companies’ environmental claims, to guarantee their reliability and to enable citizens to make informed choices.
In their respective letters on Thursday 19 June, the EPP, ECR and PfE denounced the administrative burden that a procedure such as the Green Claims Directive would represent. According to these right-wing, conservative and extreme right-wing parties, the Directive runs counter to the objectives set by the European Commission in its “Competitiveness Compass”. The EPP’s shadow rapporteurs say they asked for “a full and dedicated impact assessment, which the proposal lacks”, without getting a “satisfactory response”. They are concerned about the burdens that the Directive will impose on European companies “without sufficient proof of proportionality or necessity”.
The ECR noted the “lack of foreseeable eligibility and realistic transition periods” and the superimposition of the Directive on existing European legislation such as that on “consumer information, chemicals, packaging and reporting obligations”, all of which resulted in “unnecessary duplication and increased complexity”.
Very similar, and sent on the same day, the letters from the EPP, ECR and PfE suggest a coordinated initiative between the three political groups in the European Parliament. All three have also targeted the introduction of a prior authorisation requirement for environmental claims, a mechanism whose unprecedented nature in the internal market would run the risk of creating a precedent that would be difficult to reconcile with competitiveness and administrative simplification.
The day after receiving these letters, the Commission gave assurances that its objective, during the interinstitutional negotiations with the Council of the EU and the Parliament over the last few months, had indeed been to reduce “the administrative burden and complexity for businesses, particularly the smallest, as part of the simplification agenda”.
The inclusion of micro-enterprises in the Directive is proof, according to the Commission, that “current discussions (...) run counter to [this] simplification agenda”. Maciek Berestecki pointed out that around “30 million micro-enterprises - or 96% of all businesses - could be affected by the proposal if they were included”.
Delara Burkhardt (S&D, German) and Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe, Italian), co-rapporteurs for the Parliament, said respectively that withdrawing the proposal “would be totally unacceptable and unjustified” (Burkhardt) and that it would act as “a shift in power between the President of the Commission and the President of the EPP [Manfred Weber], to the benefit of the latter”. Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French) and Sandro Gozi insisted that the EPP, ECR and PfE “were the only ones calling for such a withdrawal”. “This announcement is all the more intolerable given that the negotiations are in their final stages”, denounced Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, French).
Member States surprised. On Wednesday 18 June, the representatives of the Member States adopted the mandate of the Council of the EU with a view to the trilogue. Agence Europe again asked delegations to confirm or deny their support for the Directive, in light of the Commission’s intention to withdraw it. 14 delegations responded to our question. Four did not wish to comment at this stage (France, Germany, Cyprus and Ireland), six (Slovenia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Malta, Luxembourg, and Belgium) recalled that they had supported the text, Latvia - which had abstained from supporting the Polish Presidency’s mandate - shares the view that the Directive would impose an excessive administrative burden and considers, like Sweden, that a pause in the negotiations would be useful. For their part, Spain and Slovakia have confirmed that they are opposed to this Directive.
Contacted by Agence Europe, the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU stated that it was “ready to participate constructively in the trilogue and to continue as planned”, having received no indication from either the Parliament or the European Commission that the trilogue scheduled for Monday 23 June would be cancelled or postponed. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)