Environment ministers adopt general approach to Green Claims

25 June 2024: The Environment Council convened in Luxembourg on 17 June, where ministers adopted a general approach to the Green Claims Directive.  

This includes removing misleading commercial practices and encouraging the adoption of genuinely green products, the general approach differentiates between explicit environmental claims and environmental labels, outlining specific obligations for each and the requirements that apply to both. It also introduces an obligation for companies to use clear criteria and the latest scientific evidence to substantiate their claims and includes new requirements to prove climate-related claims, by making a clear distinction between contribution claims and offset claims. 

Furthermore, the text upholds the fundamental principle of ex-ante verification of explicit environmental claims and labels, while introducing a simplified procedure to exempt certain explicit claims from third-party verification. It also includes the possibility of establishing new national or regional public schemes, which could be exempt from verification in specific cases, and exempting known EN ISO 14024 type 1 ecolabelling schemes from verification. 

Interinstitutional negotiations on this file are set to continue under the next Presidency of the Council of the EU, which will take place under the new legislative cycle. 

On the other hand, on the Parliament side, the two rapporteurs of the text for the Parliament, Andrus Ansip (Renew, Estonia) and Cyrus Engerer (S&D, Malta), have not been re-elected as MEPs in the European elections that took place on 6–9 June. Their replacements have not yet been appointed and the NGOs hope that the Parliament will appoint two deputies from the same political groups to ensure a consistent approach.