Rome: Europe’s rules on green claims start to bite on 27 September 2026, when Directive (EU) 2024/825 becomes applicable across all 27 member states and national consumer authorities, Italy’s AGCM among them, can treat vague environmental marketing as an unfair commercial practice rather than a matter of taste.

The directive, known in Brussels shorthand as EmpCo, amends the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the Consumer Rights Directive. Member states had to transpose it by 27 March 2026. Transposition ran unevenly, yet the application date does not move, and traders selling into late-transposing markets still face the harmonised standard through national enforcement.

Three prohibitions carry most of the practical effect. Traders may no longer make generic environmental claims such as eco-friendly, green or climate neutral unless they can demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance, which in practice means an EU Ecolabel or an equivalent scheme. They may no longer display sustainability labels they invented themselves or certified themselves. And they may no longer promise future environmental performance without a detailed, realistic implementation plan verified by an independent third party.

Directive (EU) 2024/825 treats a claim as misleading where a trader misleads the average consumer about "environmental or social characteristics" of a product, including durability, reparability and any environmental commitment made about future performance.

The penalties come from a different instrument. Under Directive (EU) 2019/2161, member states must allow fines of at least 4 per cent of a trader’s annual turnover in the member state concerned for widespread infringements, which turns a marketing line into a balance sheet question for large retailers and manufacturers.

The rules reach beyond climate language:

• Claims that a product is carbon neutral because the seller bought offsets are prohibited
• Presenting a legal requirement as a distinctive feature counts as misleading
• Withholding information about software updates that shorten a device’s useful life is banned
• Claims about durability and reparability now sit inside the same enforcement regime

Cross-border enforcement runs through the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, which lets authorities in one member state act with colleagues elsewhere against a trader operating across the single market. The network has already run coordinated sweeps on influencer marketing and subscription traps, and environmental claims are the obvious next target.

Confusion persists because two files share a nickname. The separate Green Claims Directive, which would have set a prior verification procedure for explicit environmental claims, stalled in 2025 in a dispute over whether micro-enterprises fall inside its scope. EmpCo is the text that actually applies this month, and companies waiting for the other proposal have been waiting for the wrong law.

National regulators have not been idle in the meantime. Italian, French, Dutch and German authorities have all pursued greenwashing cases under general unfair commercial practices rules over the past three years, usually arguing that an unsupported environmental claim distorts a purchasing decision. The new provisions remove the argument about whether such a claim can be unfair and reduce the question to evidence.

For marketing teams the compliance test is now concrete. Every environmental claim on a package, a website or an advertisement needs a documented basis before 27 September, every self-made label needs removal or external certification, and every net zero pledge needs a plan someone outside the company has checked. The consolidated text of the directive sits on EUR-Lex.