As of: October 2026. We wrote this article in summer 2024, when the EmpCo Directive (the EU Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition) had just been adopted and the Green Claims Directive was still being negotiated. We have brought it up to date. The views of Dr Daniel Kendziur and Florian Himmelstein come from our conversations in 2024.
In an earlier article, we first reported on the EU’s plans against greenwashing. Two directives are at the centre of this: the EmpCo Directive, which now applies, and the Green Claims Directive, which has not been adopted.
Both pursue the same goal: environmental claims made to consumers should be accurate and comprehensible. Under scrutiny is the use of terms such as »CO2-neutral« or »climate-neutral«, as is the option of polishing your own sustainability image through offsetting. At the end of this text, you’ll find an explanation of the most important terms. Our advice: as a building product manufacturer or interior brand, only use correct environmental claims in your communication that you can back up. We explain why.
What exactly is the EmpCo Directive about?
The abbreviation EmpCo stands for »Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition«. The directive targets misleading environmental claims and thus greenwashing towards consumers. The European Parliament adopted it on 17 January 2024, and it entered into force on 26 March 2024. Germany transposed it with the »Drittes Gesetz zur Änderung des Gesetzes gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb«, the third act amending the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG, the German Act against Unfair Competition). The new rules in the UWG have applied since 27 September 2026.1
Since then, the following, among other things, have been prohibited towards consumers:
- generic environmental claims such as »environmentally friendly« or »green« without a clear explanation on the same medium, if no recognised excellent environmental performance has been demonstrated, for example through the EU Ecolabel,
- sustainability labels that are neither based on a certification scheme nor established by public authorities,
- environmental claims about the entire product or company that concern only one aspect,
- claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment through the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions.
Promises for the future, such as »climate-neutral by 2035«, are now only permitted with a detailed and realistic implementation plan that is regularly verified by independent external experts.1
And what became of the Green Claims Directive?
The Green Claims Directive was meant to complement the new rules and set out in more detail how environmental claims must be substantiated. The core of the draft: companies would have had to have their environmental claims verified by independent bodies before using them in advertising. The European Parliament approved it on 12 March 2024. In June 2025, the Commission announced its intention to withdraw the proposal, and the further negotiations with the Council were cancelled. As of September 2026, the directive has been neither adopted nor formally withdrawn. The prior verification, the exemption for micro-enterprises and the fines from the draft therefore do not apply.2
So where does the problem lie?
Too many sustainability labels are considered unverifiable in their effectiveness and hardly comparable. Likewise, environmental claims are often made that are imprecise or deliberately glossed over. This is called greenwashing.
What could be foreseen in 2024
»In fact, a great deal has been put into this Empowering Consumers Directive that was originally meant to go into the Green Claims Directive. In some cases even in a stricter form than in the original draft of the Green Claims Directive. What’s relevant for us here are the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the Consumer Rights Directive,« Dr Daniel Kendziur, lawyer and partner at the Munich law firm SKW Schwarz, told us in 2024.
At the time, costs were a major concern: if every environmental claim has to be certified in advance, that hits smaller firms harder than large ones. The draft Green Claims Directive therefore provided for an exemption for micro-enterprises. »Smaller companies are exempt and can apply these rules voluntarily. But if they do apply them, they are once again subject to the legal consequences,« explained Daniel Kendziur.
Florian Himmelstein of GUTcert took a critical view of this: »For many companies, that’s quite a sobering realisation, because with 11, 15 or 20 employees they still have completely different financial strength from the big corporations of this world,« said Florian Himmelstein. »We’ll see what comes out of the Green Claims Directive in the end. In general, I recommend not jumping on buzzwords but, as a company, communicating in good conscience what you are actually doing at the moment. Are you trying to switch to electrification? Are you involved in local projects? Besides greenhouse gases, there are all the other environmental impacts too, biodiversity and so on. So there are various ways even for smaller companies to get involved somehow and to communicate all these activities.«
The obligation for prior verification did not materialise. Himmelstein’s advice still holds, because the new rules in the UWG apply to all companies, regardless of their size.
The rules that did come
One of Daniel Kendziur’s assessments has been confirmed: »One point connected with the directive that has now been adopted is that advertising with climate neutrality will be largely prohibited as soon as the advertised climate neutrality is achieved through offsetting measures.« That is exactly what has been in the UWG since 27 September 2026. He also expected a far-reaching ban on terms such as »environmentally friendly«, »green« or »climate-friendly«. Without a clear explanation, they are now only permitted towards consumers with recognised excellent environmental performance. Kendziur at the time: »The exception, at most, is where there is already a normative definition, recognised top performance at legislative level. You can see this in the example of energy efficiency classes for electrical appliances, where such normative definitions exist.«
Contrary to what was expected in 2024, you don’t have to have your environmental claims certified in advance; only the Green Claims Directive would have required that. But you still have to be able to substantiate them.
What needs to be done now?
»You need to inform yourselves, you should plan for the long term and involve all stakeholders, everyone involved in the company, to prepare for what will come your way as a company by 2026 at the latest,« Daniel Kendziur recommended in 2024. From product development through marketing and PR to the legal department and technical experts: »When it comes to pure calculation questions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for example, then everyone really should work together and create clarity in communication.«
Ultimately, brands won’t be able to avoid investing in their own sustainability strategy and communication. Brand portfolios have to be analysed and streamlined where necessary, as Daniel Kendziur says. »You need a strategy for how you can communicate and use the ideas you have in this direction clearly and in a legally sound way in future. It’s also always important to ask whom you are actually addressing: are you a supplier to the furniture industry or the construction industry? Then you have a different group of addressees than if you are in the end-customer business. Market-related sustainability strategies also require internal training. And of course, the costs of sustainability certifications and communication need to be planned and budgeted for.«
What must not happen now
In 2024, it was above all the planned certification obligation that caused unrest. »If, for example, I am only allowed to advertise a product or service with environmental benefits as long as I have a great many additional certifications produced in advance, from an ecological point of view, with regard to sustainability aspects and at high cost, then small and medium-sized enterprises may well ask themselves: is this actually still worth it?« said Kendziur. There is now a new term, green hushing, meaning that companies simply stay silent. And that might even be the more positive development, he said: that development happens on the product, but nobody talks about it any more. The point of it all, however, is not for rules to keep companies from their sustainability efforts.
For everyone who is genuinely committed and sees more in »sustainability« than a word that drives sales, the new rules are an opportunity: a chance to leave behind competing brands that have so far relied on greenwashing.
In a second part, we give you a short guide to wording environmental claims. In the Industry Update »Green claims from September 2026«, Daniel Kendziur explained to us what exactly has applied since 27 September.
Would you like support with your marketing and sales communication? Feel free to contact us.
The basics: using terms correctly
To this day, there is no legal definition for advertising claims such as »climate-neutral«. Since September 2026, the UWG does define what an environmental claim is, but not what lies behind individual terms. We all know it from everyday life: words like »climate-neutral« get juggled around, but nobody except the brand adopting this sales-boosting slogan knows exactly what is behind it in each case. Florian Himmelstein of the certification body GUTcert in Berlin explained to us how the terms differ.
For an attempt at a definition, Himmelstein recommends looking at the work of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was founded by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization and assesses the state of research on climate change:
CO2 neutrality
»With CO2 neutrality, we only look at the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, or more precisely the value of CO2 emissions. Set against it are sinks achieved technically or biologically. If the two balance each other out (achieved through reforestation, for example), so that you end up at net zero, this is called CO2 neutrality.«
Greenhouse gas neutrality
It gets more complex with what is known as greenhouse gas neutrality. »Here we also look at the other greenhouse gases. Besides carbon dioxide, there are other so-called climate gases, as they were set out at the time (1997) in the Kyoto Protocol,« said Florian Himmelstein. »These include individual greenhouse gases, but also groups of greenhouse gases, in particular fluorinated hydrocarbons such as so-called HFCs, PFC, but also things like nitrous oxide or methane.«
A decisive factor is that these other greenhouse gases generally have a stronger greenhouse effect than CO2. For comparability, the quantity of emissions is therefore converted into so-called CO2 equivalents. These can be used to describe the global warming potential of the individual greenhouse gases.
An example: over a 100-year period, methane is around 27 to 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide (IPCC, Sixth Assessment Report). One tonne of methane is therefore equivalent to around 27 to 30 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Climate neutrality
When can you really speak of climate neutrality? »According to the IPCC, it is the extension of greenhouse gas neutrality. Here, other biophysical effects are also taken into account,« explains Himmelstein. »If, for example, warmer waste water is discharged into a river, its temperature changes, and that also has an effect on the climate. Or: if clearing land changes the earth’s surface so that it has a completely different reflectivity (this is referred to as influencing the albedo effect), that also has an effect on the climate.« Quantifying and proving this, however, is no simple task.
Greenhouse gas footprint
Ultimately, with all the neutralities mentioned above, what interests us is the greenhouse gas footprint. Why? The path to climate or greenhouse gas neutrality always consists of two stages, as Florian Himmelstein explains: first, recording the status quo. How many emissions come from the company, from the product, from the service? In a second step, you consider which strategy to use to reduce, avoid or offset the emissions.
For products, for example, you look at the entire life cycle: raw material production, upstream production, transport, storage and so on, right through to use, disposal or, ideally of course, cradle-to-cradle options. For companies, on the other hand, you look at the company’s direct emissions on site: combustion processes, indirect emissions such as for purchased electricity, purchased goods and services. A comprehensive view also includes the use of your own products and their later disposal. So it’s about the upstream and downstream value chains.
And what about offsetting?
»On the question of whether offsetting makes sense at all, there are two opposing world views: one side says offsetting makes sense. After all, the core idea is to reduce CO2 where this can be done most cheaply. On the other hand, the criticism is also justified: the question of whether the full reduction effect actually takes place in the end. The quality isn’t always such that the project regions where the offsetting is carried out experience additional positive effects, such as continuously supplying people locally with electrical energy by means of biogas plants.«
There is also the approach of setting aside a kind of internal carbon price, in order to then put the budget collected into your own reduction projects. »Because when you offset, the money is gone for now; you get no return on investment. You don’t get any investment or reduction improvements on site yourself,« said Himmelstein. So why not put up the money yourself and invest it in measurable internal reduction projects?
By the way: a lot has also happened in sustainability reporting. With Directive (EU) 2026/470, known as Omnibus I, the CSRD now only applies to companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than €450 million in net turnover. The supply chain directive CSDDD only takes effect from 26 July 2029.3
This article reflects the situation as of October 2026 and does not replace a legal review of individual cases.
Sources
- (1) Bundesgesetzblatt (Federal Law Gazette) 2026 I No. 43: Third Act amending the UWG and Directive (EU) 2024/825
- (2) European Parliament, procedure 2023/0085(COD) and Legislative Train Schedule
- (3) Directive (EU) 2026/470 (Omnibus I)
- Council of the European Union, press release: »Consumer rights: final approval for the directive to empower consumers for the green transition«
