The EU's New Anti-Greenwashing Rules: What Changes This Month
A new directive puts specific conditions on environmental claims sold in the EU. Here is what it covers, who it hits, and when you need to be ready.
If your company sells anything in the EU with the word "eco," "sustainable," or "carbon neutral" on the label, a new set of rules now governs what you can say and how you have to prove it. The requirements take effect this month, and they are not a code of conduct. They carry fines and product bans attached to specific claims.
This is the piece for the person who has to decide, this quarter, whether the marketing copy and the compliance file agree with each other.
What the rules actually require
The directive targets a narrow but common failure mode: a claim on packaging or in an ad that sounds precise but rests on nothing a regulator could check. "Climate neutral by 2030." "Made with recycled materials." "Better for the planet." Under the new requirements, a claim like this needs a substantiation file behind it before it goes to market, not after a challenge.
The file has to show the claim is accurate, based on recognized scientific evidence, and specific about scope. A claim covering the whole company has to be true for the whole company, not one product line. A claim based on an offset has to say so, and offsets alone no longer justify a blanket "carbon neutral" label.
Generic environmental logos and self-certified sustainability seals are restricted unless they come from an approved certification scheme or a public authority. A company cannot design its own leaf icon and put it on a bottle.
Who this actually hits
The obligations fall on any business marketing goods or services to consumers in the EU, regardless of where the company is headquartered. A US manufacturer selling through a European retailer is in scope the same as a company based in Frankfurt. Some exemptions exist for micro-enterprises, but midsize and large companies get no grace period based on size alone.
Marketing teams are the obvious target, but the file requirement means legal, sustainability, and product teams are now co-authors of every claim that reaches a label or an ad. A tagline written by one department and never checked by the others is exactly the failure this rule is built to catch.
When enforcement starts, and what changes first
The requirements are slated to take effect later this month, which means the window to get ahead of them is closing, not open-ended. Member states are responsible for enforcement, and penalties follow the pattern set by the EU's existing consumer protection framework, meaning fines calculated as a percentage of annual turnover in the relevant member state, not a fixed cap.
What changes first in practice is not a wave of enforcement actions on day one. It is what regulators and competitors start asking for. A claim that used to be accepted at face value now needs a file behind it, and the first companies to get tested will likely be the ones with the boldest claims and the thinnest paperwork.
Why the substantiation file is the real work
The label copy is the easy part to fix. Rewriting "eco-friendly" to something narrower takes an afternoon. Building the file that supports whatever claim survives the rewrite is the actual project, and it is not one a marketing team can do alone.
The file needs to trace the claim to a method, the method to a standard a third party recognizes, and the standard to data someone can audit. If a company claims a product is "30% lower carbon than our previous version," the file needs the baseline, the measurement method, and the boundary of what was measured. Was that manufacturing only, or manufacturing plus transport? The directive does not require perfection. It requires that the answer exists in writing before the claim is made, not invented after a regulator asks.
This is where the size of the job gets real. A company with forty product lines making environmental claims in six markets is not doing a copy edit. It is running an audit across every claim it currently makes, deciding which ones survive, and building a file for each one that does.
What to do before the deadline
- Pull every environmental claim currently in market, packaging, advertising, and your own website, into one list. Most companies have never done this and are surprised by the count.
- For each claim, ask who could defend it in front of a regulator today, and with what document. If the answer is nobody and nothing, that claim is a liability, not an asset.
- Check every logo and seal against the new restrictions on self-certification. A scheme your company invented in 2019 will not clear the bar.
- Decide which claims to narrow rather than defend. A specific claim about one product line, backed by a real file, beats a sweeping claim about the whole brand that nobody can substantiate.
None of this covers your Scope 3 emissions disclosures, which sit under separate reporting rules. This directive is about what you say to a customer at the point of sale, not what you report to an auditor at year end. The two overlap in practice, because the same underlying data often supports both, but they are not the same file and not the same deadline.
The companies that treat this as a legal exercise, done once and filed away, will be back doing it again the first time a competitor or a regulator asks a hard question about a specific claim. The ones that build the substantiation habit now, tying every claim to a file before it ships, will have an answer ready when that question comes. Start with the list of every claim you are currently making. That is the part nobody can do for you.
Questions people ask
What counts as a substantiation file?
It's the written record tracing a claim to a method, the method to a standard a third party recognizes, and the standard to auditable data. For a claim like "30% lower carbon than our previous version," the file needs the baseline, the measurement method, and the boundary measured, for example whether that covers manufacturing only or manufacturing plus transport. It has to exist before the claim is made, not after a regulator asks.
Does this apply to my company if we're not based in the EU?
Yes. The rules apply to any business marketing goods or services to consumers in the EU, regardless of where the company is headquartered. A US manufacturer selling through a European retailer is in scope the same as a company based in Frankfurt. Some exemptions exist for micro-enterprises, but midsize and large companies get no grace period based on size alone.
Can we still use offsets to support a carbon neutral claim?
Not alone. Under the new rules, offsets alone no longer justify a blanket "carbon neutral" label. A claim based on an offset has to say so explicitly, and it still needs a substantiation file showing the claim is accurate and specific about scope, whether it covers one product line or the whole company.
What happens to logos and sustainability seals we created ourselves?
Generic environmental logos and self-certified sustainability seals are restricted unless they come from an approved certification scheme or a public authority. A company cannot design its own leaf icon and put it on a bottle. A scheme a company invented in-house, even years ago, will not clear the new bar and needs to be checked against the restrictions before the deadline.
Does this cover our Scope 3 emissions reporting too?
No. This directive governs what a company says to a customer at the point of sale, on packaging, in ads, or on a website. Scope 3 emissions disclosures sit under separate reporting rules with a different deadline. The two often draw on the same underlying data in practice, but they are not the same file and not the same requirement.
How are penalties calculated under the new rules?
Member states enforce the directive, and penalties follow the pattern set by the EU's existing consumer protection framework. That means fines are calculated as a percentage of annual turnover in the relevant member state, not a fixed cap, so the financial exposure scales with company size and revenue in that market.