EPP Calls on EU Commission to Scrap Anti-Greenwashing Legislation

The European Individuals’s Celebration, the most important political celebration within the EU Parliament, has known as on the European Fee to withdraw the proposed Inexperienced Claims Directive, aimed toward defending customers from greenwashing claims in regards to the environmental attributes of services, arguing that the brand new guidelines could be overly burdensome and complicated, and that the optimistic influence of the directive is unclear.

In a letter to EU Commissioner for Surroundings, Water Resilience and a Aggressive Round Economic system Jessika Roswall, EPP representatives mentioned that the celebration wouldn’t be capable to endorse the brand new directive in upcoming trilogue negotiations between the Fee, Parliament and the EU Council.

The Fee launched the directive in March 2023, aimed toward addressing a necessity for dependable and verifiable data for customers, in gentle research discovering that greater than half of inexperienced claims by firms within the EU have been imprecise or deceptive, and 40% have been fully unsubstantiated. The directive types a part of a package deal of consumer-oriented environmental and round economy-focused proposals by the EU Fee, which additionally consists of the ecodesign regulation, updates to the EU’s unfair industrial practices directive (UCPD) and shopper rights directive (CRD) to incorporate inexperienced transition and round economy-related elements, and selling restore (proper to restore).

The Fee’s proposal included minimal necessities for companies to substantiate, talk and confirm their inexperienced claims, obligating firms to make sure the reliability of their voluntary environmental claims with unbiased verification and confirmed with scientific proof. The directive additionally focused the proliferation of personal environmental labels, requiring them to be dependable, clear, independently verified and usually reviewed, and permitting new labels provided that developed on the EU stage, and authorised provided that they show larger environmental ambition than present label schemes.

Within the letter, nevertheless, EPP MEPs Arba Kokalari and Danuše Nerudová state that whereas the EPP helps guidelines to handle greenwashing and supply customers with confidence in environmental claims, it believes that the brand new guidelines would negatively influence sustainability communication as a consequence of its necessities “which might be overly advanced, administratively burdensome, and expensive,” in distinction with the EU’s present competitiveness-focused push to scale back administrative and compliance burdens on firms.

Among the many key issues with the Inexperienced Claims Directive raised by the lawmakers is its “preapproval requirement for environmental claims,” which they be aware just isn’t a regular mechanism within the inside market and isn’t utilized throughout sectors,” and warn “might set a precedent that’s tough to reconcile with our broader aims of regulatory coherence, competitiveness and administrative simplification.”

The MEPs additionally criticize the dearth of an influence evaluation relating to the proposed directive, stating that the proposal doesn’t “convincingly show that the anticipated advantages of the regime would outweigh the numerous prices and regulatory uncertainty it entails.”

Trilogue negotiations on the directive are scheduled for subsequent week. It stays unclear if the directive might be adopted with out the EPP’s help.

Nebojím se ozvat. Se švédskou kolegyní @ArbaKokalari jsme jako stínové zpravodajky za EPP požádaly Evropskou komisi o stažení návrhu směrnice o ekologických tvrzeních (Inexperienced Claims). Navrhovaná verze je příliš složitá, nákladná a chybí jí dopadové studie.

Přitom právě méně… pic.twitter.com/PW3VJrh1Mr

— Danuše Nerudová (@danusenerudova) June 18, 2025