Making Language Matter: Taking Stock of the Green Claims Directive
Citizens are increasingly making efforts to lower the impact of their consumption. And companies are catering to those preferences. Sustainable consumption is on the rise, and with it, regulatory efforts to enable it.
On March 14, the European Parliament approved its negotiating position on the Green Claims Directive with only minor modifications. Once the Council does the same, the text will enter the next step of the legislative process: a trilogue between the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission.
In this blog post, we share our take on what the newest position of the Parliament reveals and what future discussions are likely to address.
But first, let’s start with the basics.
What’s the Green Claims Directive?
The Green Claims Directive departs from the assumption that false, incomplete, or vague environmental claims often mislead and misinform consumers. An oft-cited statistic suggests that around 53% of green claims are based on vague, misleading or unfounded information.
The Green Claims Directive sets out to tackle this issue. It applies only to voluntary green claims made by companies towards their consumers.
The initially proposed text suggests these key parameters:
Explicit environmental claims must always be clear, unambiguous, objective, verifiable, and understandable.
They must be based on widely recognised scientific evidence, use accurate information, and consider relevant international standards.
Any claim must be substantiated with an assessment. This assessment has to adhere to several outlined criteria.
Before a company can make a claim, it must be verified by a verifier that is approved by a Member State and issues certificates of conformity.
Once a claim is certified, it can be communicated to consumers. There are several rules to adhere to here. Most importantly, once a certificate of compliance is issued, this certificate validates the use of that claim on the entire EU market.
A certificate issued in one Member State can be contested by another if they think it was issued wrongly.
Any claim must be accompanied by complete background information, including full transparency regarding the method used.
The Directive outlines specific rules for comparative environmental claims.
Another type of green claim is a label. Labelling bodies must meet the general and label-specific governance requirements to be certified.
A certified labelling body’s verification mechanism is considered sufficient to allow for the use of explicit environmental claims. This means a company using a certified label does not have to apply for verification with a national authority once verified by the label’s internally developed assessment method.
The Parliament Vote: Why Now?
The recent negotiating position approved by the Parliament showed that the Green Claims Directive is an impressively unifying piece of legislation.
It’s still worth noting the timing of this vote. Current polls suggest that the far-right party coalition Identity and Democracy (ID) will become the third-largest party in the Parliament after the elections in June. The liberal coalition Renew Europe and the EU Greens, on the other hand, are likely to incur substantial losses.
Last week's vote effectively locked in the Parliament’s position on the Green Claims Directive and will serve as its basis for the next negotiations. It’s not a Parliament position on the file; it is the Parliament position.
This generally means that no matter the results of the upcoming elections, the Parliament will have to represent the text adopted last week in the upcoming trilogue. It’s non-negotiable now.
The Art of Actionability
Much of the Parliament’s position focuses on the need to make the implementation of the Green Claims Directive feasible and clear. The approved amendments include several clarifications on definitions, stipulate a 30-day certification window, and introduce the idea of a simplified verification procedure for some claims.
Notable is also an added point of clarification for labels. According to the Parliament, companies should be allowed to make claims substantiated by the assessment performed as a part of the label’s requirements without additional certification. This point will likely be included in the final text since it aligns with the Council’s past positions.
The amendments approved by the Parliament will go a long way in making the Directive fit for implementation. The two fast-tracks – a simplified certification procedure and environmental labels – will widen a previously critical bottleneck at the point of verification, which could have rendered the Directive unactionable.
Making Language Count
The Parliament’s take on a simplified certification process also highlights some remaining points of unclarity.
The suggested amendment describes which claims may be considered for the simplified process. The list comprises, for instance, the most common environmental claims, claims based on standards or methods recognised by the European Commission, and the type of claims whose nature does not require a full life-cycle analysis.
In outlining a further game plan for the Directive, the Parliament suggests additional steps to support the simplified verification procedure. Namely a list of most common claims, guidelines on substantiating claims with appropriate evidence, and a database listing standards and methods that may benefit from a simplified verification procedure.
These steps will be essential to prevent a potential pitfall in the Parliament's position. While it makes considerable progress on actionable implementation, it still leaves considerable leeway for Member States’ varying interpretations of terms like ‘most common’ and ‘nature.’
The idea of keeping an up-to-date list of the most common environmental claims is an important step in acknowledging this. To make implementation as smooth as possible, it will also be important that any Delegated Act describing a simplified verification procedure also explains how to, for instance, determine if a given claim will only require a partial Life Cycle Assessment.
What’s Next?
The Council’s negotiating position is expected to be approved in April or May of this year. Afterwards, the trilogues can kick off.
Because of the upcoming elections, this is expected to happen no earlier than October of this year. The trilogues will determine the final text of the Directive and are shaping up to focus on practically preparing it for implementation.
Like the Parliament, the Council previously indicated that they like the idea of a quicker route to certify certain sustainability labels and claims substantiated as a part of the assessment required by said labels. In this context, the Council’s approval of the
Parliament’s additionally suggested simplified certification procedure is likely.
We expect the trilogues will focus on Delegated Acts and implementation timelines. While the Commission’s original draft of the Directive indicated a 24-month transposition period, the approved text from the Parliament imagines a 30-month transition period instead. A reasonable suggestion since the Delegated Acts proposed by the Parliament would need to be finalised before the Directive can be implemented.
While this leaves several things up for finalisation, the current draft and political climate already give a good idea of how best to prepare for compliance with the Directive.
Granted, it is still difficult to confidently judge whether any given claim or label will comply with the Directive. However, it is already quite clear which ones will not. And since some of the changes needed to guarantee compliance will require years of preparation, we advise you to start preparing today. This Directive is a surefire thing. And at 2B Policy would be happy to work with you towards surefire compliance.
AUTHORS
Svenja Balkhausen
Svenja supports the 2B Policy on the work of the different Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Technical Secretariats and 2B Policy’s work on the Substantiating Green Claims Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Before joining 2B Policy, Svenja worked as a fundraiser for an environmental NGO for two years and studied Liberal Arts and Sciences at Leiden University in The Hague. In her free time, she likes to read and discover new places.
Baptiste Carriere-Pradal
Baptiste brings together expertise from all corners of the Apparel and Footwear ecosystem. During his years at Decathlon he established and led Decathlon’s first global sustainability department. He subsequently joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, launching their European Office, and leading their transparency and policy activities. In 2020, together with Bente Bauer, he launched 2BPolicy - a consulting firm at the intersection of sustainability and policy. Baptiste also works on his family’s organic and agroforestry wine estate in Southern France.
