Proposal for “Green Claims” Directive

On 22 March 2023, the European Commission published a proposal for a Directive on the substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims. The proposal aims to harmonize the evaluation and monitoring of voluntary environmental claims “green claims” to avoid market fragmentation due to diverging national approaches that were introduced or would be introduced in the absence of rules at the EU level. However, as it is a directive (as opposed to a regulation) it must be transposed into national rules, which in this case include that verified bodies must be appointed in each country.