EU Commission Scraps Green Claims Directive

The European Commission revealed on Wednesday that it has officially withdrawn the Green Claims Directive, its proposed regulation aimed at protecting consumers from greenwashing claims about the environmental attributes of products and services.

The withdrawal, announced with the release of the Commission’s 2027 work programme, follows a prolonged process to pass the regulation, which was paused last year after losing support from major political parties, citing the rules’ potential to disproportionately burden small companies.

The Commission introduced the Green Claims 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 proposed directive 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.

The directive formed  part of a package of consumer-oriented environmental and circular economy-focused proposals by the EU Commission, which also included the ecodesign regulation, enabling the adoption of requirements for a wide range of products to improve their environmental sustainability, and the Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, (ECGT), aimed at protecting consumers from deceptive sustainability-related marketing, which recently entered into force.

The Green Claims Directive was effectively paused in June 2025, after two trilogue meetings on the regulation between the Commission, Parliament and EU Council, after the European People’s Party (EPP),  the largest political party in the EU Parliament, issued a letter requesting that the Commission “reconsiders and ultimately withdraws” the directive, arguing that the new rules would be overly burdensome and complex, in contrast to ongoing efforts to simplify compliance burdens on companies.

In a press conference following the publication of the letter, a Commission spokesperson said that “the Commission intends to withdraw the Green Claims proposal.” In a subsequent statement provided to ESG Today, however, a Commission spokesperson clarified that it had not been withdrawn, but that the Commission did intend to withdraw it if microenterprises were not exempted from the scope of the anti-greenwashing proposal. Commentators at the time questioned the small company rationale, pointing out that lawmakers had already decided to remove microenterprises from the scope of the directive in the negotiations.

In the new work program, the Commission revealed that the directive has now been officially withdrawn, stating:

“The file has been pending with co-legislators more than three years. The Council failed to agree on a negotiating mandate in June 2024. Attempts by the Council presidency in 2025 to advance discussions did not succeed and the file is unlikely to secure support in the Council within a reasonable timeframe.”