EU Green Claims Directive: TIC Council reacts to General Approach

The Council of the EU set its General Approach on the Directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive). While there is a clear recognition of the role of third-party independent verification in the substantiation of claims, some provisions could put in danger the consumer protection against greenwashing.

• The Council proposes to create a simplified procedure for the verification of certain types of environmental claims with presumption of conformity. Presumption of conformity goes against the spirit of the Directive to avoid unverified claims. TIC Council alerts on the risk to see inappropriate claims in the absence of independent verification. We recommend achieving this simplified procedure with other measures such as environmental data management process certification, without hindering the role of third parties and also making it easier for traders to substantiate their claims.

• The Council adds the need for the verifier to be independent of “the environmental labelling scheme owner associated to the environmental label”. Independent accredited verification bodies have already established trustworthy label schemes where they guarantee appropriate messages with their own names and reputation. This is a good thing which should be continued, not ended. A complete separation would lead to a change of the business model in the TIC sector, increase unnecessarily the bureaucracy and could therefore impact the availability of verifiers. We recommend deleting this since independence would already be confirmed by accreditation.

• The General Approach mandates the verifier to be accredited to EN ISO/IEC 17029. While this standard is a key one in the verification of claims, it is not the only standard to achieve this task, nor are all verifiers already accredited to it. Verification can also be achieved with an ISO/IEC 17065 or ISO 14024 accreditation, that also include surveillance through time. We recommend not to refer to only one standard in the text to avoid further issues.

TIC Council calls on the Council of the EU to consider during the trilogues these provisions that will make the verification system work better, in the benefits of both consumers and companies in the fight against greenwashing, without unnecessary burdens to industry.

The TIC industry is ready for the tasks that the text requires as verifiers of the claims and calls for clear requirements in this highly needed Directive. We are more than happy to engage with the co-legislators to achieve the best possible Directive to protect consumers.