When your marketing team sends you a draft campaign featuring a "climate-friendly" product claim, your first question shouldn't be whether it's aspirational. It should be whether you can defend it in court.
That's the shift the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive (EmpCo) creates. Over the past few months, I've fielded variations of the same questions from compliance officers trying to figure out what this directive actually requires. These aren't theoretical concerns. EU member states must transpose EmpCo by March 27, 2026, with national rules taking effect from September 27, 2026. That timeline makes these questions urgent.
Here's what compliance teams are asking, and what you need to know.
Do You Need Pre-Approval for Every Environmental Statement?
No, but you need a governance process that treats sustainability claims like financial disclosures.
EmpCo doesn't create a centralized approval regime. Instead, it combines specific prohibitions with broader rules against misleading commercial practices. Some claims are blacklisted outright. Others are assessed case-by-case based on whether they contain false information, deceive the average consumer, or materially influence purchasing decisions.
Your control framework should identify every channel where environmental claims appear: packaging, websites, social media, investor materials, advertising. Before publication, document what evidence supports each claim, whether the wording matches the scope of that evidence, who approved it, and how you'll monitor changes in underlying data.
Higher-risk claims need enhanced scrutiny. That includes climate-neutrality statements, future targets, generic environmental language, and comparative claims. If a regulator or competitor challenges the claim, you need to demonstrate it's legally defensible.
Can You Use Terms Like "Sustainable" or "Eco-Friendly"?
Only if you can back them with recognized excellent environmental performance, or if you specify what you mean on the same medium.
Generic environmental claims are where most companies will trip up. Under EmpCo, broad expressions like "environmentally friendly," "eco-friendly," "green," "climate-friendly," "sustainable," or "responsible" can't be used just because you've done something positive for the environment. You need either documented excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim, or you must clearly specify what the claim means directly on the packaging, advertisement, or sales interface.
Here's the distinction: "Climate-friendly packaging" is a generic claim that requires substantiation. "Packaging produced using 100% renewable energy" is specific and may fall outside that prohibition, though it still must be accurate and comply with general rules against misleading practices.
Review every instance of generic environmental language in your current materials. If you can't substantiate it with excellent performance metrics or specify what it means, it's a compliance exposure.
What About Carbon-Neutral Product Claims Based on Offsets?
Those are prohibited under EmpCo if they're product-level claims.
The directive explicitly prohibits claiming that a product has a neutral, reduced, or positive environmental impact regarding greenhouse-gas emissions when that claim relies on offsetting. The EU considers these statements inherently misleading because they create the impression that the product itself, or its production and supply, doesn't have an adverse climate impact.
You can still communicate investments in environmental initiatives or carbon-credit projects, provided the information isn't misleading. The critical requirement: those investments can't support a prohibited product-level neutrality claim.
This creates a significant review obligation. If you've integrated neutrality language into packaging, product descriptions, websites, or advertising campaigns, you need to distinguish carefully between communications about corporate climate initiatives and claims about specific product environmental impact.
Do 2030 Net-Zero Commitments Need to Change?
They need to be supported by a detailed implementation plan with regular independent verification.
EmpCo addresses forward-looking claims, including commitments to achieve climate neutrality, net zero, or other environmental objectives by a future date. These claims may be considered misleading unless they're supported by clear, objective, publicly available, and verifiable commitments and targets.
You need a detailed and realistic implementation plan showing how targets will be achieved, including resource allocation. Progress must be verified regularly by an independent third-party expert, with findings made available to consumers.
This requirement extends beyond marketing. An environmental promise may depend on investment decisions, technological developments, operational transformation, and emissions reductions across multiple business units. Don't present a corporate ambition as an achievable commitment if you haven't established a realistic route to delivery with defined ownership, resources, and monitoring processes.
Can You Use Your Proprietary Green Certification Logo?
Not unless it's based on a qualifying certification scheme or established by a public authority.
EmpCo tightens rules governing sustainability labels. Companies generally can't display a sustainability label unless it's based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority. A qualifying certification scheme must meet minimum transparency and credibility standards, including objective monitoring by a competent third party independent of both the scheme owner and the company using the label. Scheme conditions must be publicly available.
This provision directly affects proprietary green labels and self-created environmental symbols. You can't establish your own sustainability mark and use it to imply independent environmental quality without a qualifying certification framework.
Review not just written sustainability claims but also seals, icons, logos, color schemes, and other visual devices that communicate an environmental message.
What Are the Consequences of Getting It Wrong?
Legal exposure extends well beyond regulatory fines.
For widespread infringements with an EU cross-border dimension, the existing European consumer-law enforcement framework requires member states to provide for maximum fines of at least 4% of the trader's annual turnover in the member states concerned. Where turnover information isn't available, national law must provide for a maximum fine of at least €2 million.
But the economic exposure extends further. A prohibited claim may require you to stop campaigns, revise websites and sales materials, change product packaging, or defend litigation across several jurisdictions. Misleading claims can create disputes with customers and business partners and increase scrutiny of related sustainability disclosures.
Reputational consequences can be more severe than financial penalties. Greenwashing allegations directly challenge organizational credibility. If you can't support a public sustainability promise, stakeholders may question not only the claim itself but also management reliability, internal control effectiveness, and the integrity of your broader sustainability strategy.
Where Compliance Adds Value
Sustainability communications typically develop across marketing, corporate affairs, product management, legal, and sustainability teams. Without a common governance framework, no single function has a complete view of claims being made, evidence supporting them, or assumptions on which they depend.
Compliance doesn't need to own every environmental data point. You should, however, establish the governance through which claims are identified, risk-assessed, substantiated, approved, and monitored. That's the control framework EmpCo demands, and it's where your expertise becomes essential.
The central question has changed. It's no longer whether a sustainability statement is attractive or broadly consistent with corporate ambitions. It's whether it's legally permissible, factually supportable, and capable of withstanding external scrutiny.
