Under pressure from industry, the European Commission is reportedly preparing to abandon its Green Claims Directive, which aims to combat greenwashing, particularly on packaging. However, the future of this directive remains unclear…

‘In the current context, the Commission intends to withdraw the proposed Green Claims Directive.’ It was with this terse statement that Maciej Berestecki, spokesperson for the European Commission, confirmed on 20 June during a press conference what had been looming for several months: the possible abandonment of this directive aimed at regulating companies’ communications containing environmental claims, particularly in relation to packaging. The news was reported by various media outlets, from Novethic to Packaging News, which nevertheless pointed out that, according to the Foodservice Packaging Association (FPA), three quarters of European products carry an environmental claim on their packaging and half of these claims are misleading!

Hot and cold

This new regulation, which defined the criteria that companies had to meet in their environmental claims, prohibited claims such as ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘net zero’ when a company used carbon offsetting to achieve this. It also required vague claims (‘organic’, ‘eco’, etc.) to be backed up by specific information and authentic data.

This setback has not failed to provoke the ire of NGOs keen to impose new guarantees on CSR claims on packaging. ‘Withdrawing the proposal without reaching an ambitious agreement would leave European consumers and businesses without clear rules. Only those who make environmental claims would benefit from the removal of this legislation,’ read a joint statement by several industry associations and NGOs (ECOS, Client Earth, Carbon Market Watch, EEB).

However, at this stage, there is still some uncertainty surrounding the announced withdrawal. Novethic has therefore decided to update its article on 25 June, following a statement by a European Commission spokesperson clarifying that Ursula Von der Leyen (President of the Commission) “has not changed” her support for the Green Claims Directive. Make of that what you will…

We will certainly have a clearer picture in a few months’ time, at the next edition of ALLFORPACK EMBALLAGE PARIS (24-26 November 2026 – PARIS NORD VILLEPINTE), a must-attend event for packaging professionals and one of the four flagship areas of the show alongside logistics solutions, professional printing solutions and information processing solutions.