The European People’s Party,  the largest political party in the EU Parliament, has called on the European Commission to withdraw the proposed Green Claims Directive, aimed at protecting consumers from greenwashing claims about the environmental attributes of products and services, arguing that the new rules would be overly burdensome and complex, and that the positive impact  of the directive is unclear.

In a letter to EU Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy Jessika Roswall, EPP representatives said that the party would not be able to endorse the new directive in upcoming trilogue negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and the EU Council.

The Commission introduced the directive in March 2023, aimed at addressing a need for reliable and verifiable information for consumers, in light studies finding that more than half of green claims by companies in the EU were vague or misleading, and 40% were completely unsubstantiated. The directive forms part of a package of consumer-oriented environmental and circular economy-focused proposals by the EU Commission, which also includes the ecodesign regulation, updates to the EU’s unfair commercial practices directive (UCPD) and consumer rights directive (CRD) to include green transition and circular economy-related aspects, and promoting repair (right to repair).

The Commission’s proposal included minimum requirements for businesses to substantiate, communicate and verify their green claims, obligating companies to ensure the reliability of their voluntary environmental claims with independent verification and proven with scientific evidence. The directive also targeted the proliferation of private environmental labels, requiring them to be reliable, transparent, independently verified and regularly reviewed, and allowing new labels only if developed at the EU level, and approved only if they demonstrate greater environmental ambition than existing label schemes.

In the letter, however, EPP MEPs Arba Kokalari and Danuše Nerudová state that while the EPP supports rules to address greenwashing and provide consumers with confidence in environmental claims, it believes that the new rules would negatively impact sustainability communication due to its requirements “that are overly complex, administratively burdensome, and costly,” in contrast with the EU’s current competitiveness-focused push to reduce administrative and compliance burdens on companies.

Among the key problems with the Green Claims Directive raised by the lawmakers is its “preapproval requirement for environmental claims,” which they note is not a standard mechanism in the internal market and is not applied across sectors,” and warn “may set a precedent that is difficult to reconcile with our broader objectives of regulatory coherence, competitiveness and administrative simplification.”

The MEPs also criticize the lack of an impact assessment regarding the proposed directive, stating that the proposal does not “convincingly demonstrate that the expected benefits of the regime would outweigh the significant costs and regulatory uncertainty it entails.”

Trilogue negotiations on the directive are scheduled for next week. It remains unclear if the directive will be adopted without the EPP’s support.

Nebojím se ozvat. Se švédskou kolegyní @ArbaKokalari jsme jako stínové zpravodajky za EPP požádaly Evropskou komisi o stažení návrhu směrnice o ekologických tvrzeních (Green 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