The European Commission revealed on Friday that it plans to withdraw the Green Claims Directive just days prior to trilogue negotiations to finalize the proposed rules aimed at protecting consumers from greenwashing claims about the environmental attributes of products and services, following objections from lawmakers that brought its ability to be adopted into doubt.
Following a question about the Commission’s plans for the directive at a press conference, Commission spokesperson Maciej Berestecki said:
“I can say that in the current context, indeed the Commission intends to withdraw the Green Claims proposal.”
The withdrawal follows two years of negotiations in the EU Parliament and Council over the proposal. The Commission introduced the directive in March 2023, aimed at addressing a need for reliable and verifiable information for consumers, in light studies finding that more than half of green claims by companies in the EU were vague or misleading, and 40% were completely unsubstantiated.
The Commission’s proposal included minimum requirements for businesses to substantiate, communicate and verify their green claims, obligating companies to ensure the reliability of their voluntary environmental claims with independent verification and proven with scientific evidence. The directive also targeted the proliferation of private environmental labels, requiring them to be reliable, transparent, independently verified and regularly reviewed, and allowing new labels only if developed at the EU level, and approved only if they demonstrate greater environmental ambition than existing label schemes.
In the lead-up to next week’s negotiations on the proposal, however, the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political party in the EU Parliament, issued a letter requesting that the Commission “reconsiders and ultimately withdraws” the directive, arguing that the new rules would be overly burdensome and complex, in contrast to ongoing efforts to simplify compliance burdens on companies.
The EPP letter also criticized the lack of an impact assessment regarding the proposed directive, stating that the proposal does not “convincingly demonstrate that the expected benefits of the regime would outweigh the significant costs and regulatory uncertainty it entails.”
A spokesperson did not provide more details following subsequent questions into the process and motivation behind the move to scrap the Green Claims Directive, stating that they were “not in a position to share more information for now… we will see how to take things forward,” adding that the Commission “will keep you informed on next steps.”
