European Parliament: Establishing a horizontal European climate label for products

The European Parliament’s Think Tank has published on 5 September a study about a European climate label for products, further to the Commission’s Green Claims directive proposal. A label design is proposed that allows seamless cross-category comparison as well as the development of a roadmap. This should consider the broader context of environmental and sustainability labelling and the need to improve international product life cycle assessment standards and harmonise conflicting EU calculation rules.

On 22 March 2023 the European Commission issued a Directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive). If implemented as proposed, the green claims directive stipulates that new public environmental labelling schemes, and thus also climate labelling schemes, may only be established under Union law. Private operators may apply to a Member State for approval to establish a new environmental labelling scheme, under rather strict conditions.

More information: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/747453/EPRS_STU(2023)747453_EN.pdf

Contact: Lebo Mofolo, lmofolo@frucom.eu