European Parliament Committees vote on Green Claims report

Members of the European Parliament’s Internal Market (IMCO) and Environment (ENVI) committees adopted on Wednesday 14 February their draft report on the proposed directive to substantiate green claims, with 85 votes to 2 and 14 abstentions.

In their vote, the MEPs have concluded the following:

-companies should submit any future environmental marketing claims for approval to accredited verifiers before using them, the deadline for an approval decision will be 30 days.

-Failure to comply by these rules may could lead to exclusion from procurement, loss of revenue and fines of at least at 4% of their annual turnover.

-A list of less complex claims and products that could benefit from faster or simpler verification should also be developed by the Commission.

-Green claims based solely on the so-called carbon offsetting schemes are banned, although companies can still mention offsetting schemes if they have already reduced their emissions as much as possible and use these schemes for residual emissions only.

-Claims that products have been improved cannot be based on data that are more than five years old.

-Comparative claims (i.e. ads comparing two different goods) would be subject to special rules.

The report will be voted on at an upcoming plenary session (most likely in March), and the Green Claims Directive file will be followed up by the new Parliament after the European elections on 6-9 June.

More information: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/nl/press-room/20240212IPR17624/greenwashing-how-eu-firms-can-validate-their-green-claims

Contact: Lebo Mofolo, lmofolo@frucom.eu