The Charter guarantees a high level of consumer protection and the principle of environmental protection. Article 38 of the Charter states that ‘Union policies shall ensure a high level of consumer protection.’ Article 37 of the Charter states that ‘A high level of environmental protection and the improvement of the quality of the environment must be integrated into the policies of the Union and ensured in accordance with the principle of sustainable development.’

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) includes provisions relating to consumer protection, such as Article 169, which allows the EU to adopt measures to protect the health, safety and economic interests of consumers.

The TFEU also enables the EU to adopt measures to protect and improve the environment, combat climate change, promote sustainable development and protect fundamental rights. Article 191 outlines the objectives of EU policy on the environment, which include preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment, protecting human health and promoting measures at the international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems.

Furthermore, Article 11 TFEU requires the EU to integrate environmental protection requirements into its policies and activities and to promote measures at the international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems.

Also relevant – although it is soft law – is the European Pillar of Social Rights, which includes principles such as the right to fair working conditions, the right to social protection and inclusion and the right to consumer protection.

Misinformation about the environmental impact of products has a potentially significant impact on human health, environmental protection and consumer rights. It can have an impact on corporate sustainability by leading to a loss of trust among consumers and stakeholders, which can ultimately harm a company’s reputation and cause financial losses. It can also make it difficult for consumers to identify and support sustainable businesses, which can ultimately harm the environment. Furthermore, it undermines consumers’ ability to make choices that advance their economic and sustainability goals, and potentially disempowers them as rights holders.

A total of 94 % of Europeans say that protecting the environment is important to them personally, and 68 % agree that their consumption habits adversely affect the environment in Europe and globally (Special Eurobarometer 501).

In the European Green Deal, the Commission made a commitment to ensure that consumers can make more informed choices and can actively participate in the ecological transition. In particular, the European Green Deal aims to address false environmental claims by providing consumers with trustworthy, comparable and verifiable information, enabling them to make sustainable decisions and thereby reducing the risk of greenwashing. The priority of addressing greenwashing was further emphasised in both the new circular economy action plan and the new consumer agenda. The recently implemented Green Deal industrial plan emphasises the importance of allowing consumers to make decisions based on transparent and reliable information about the sustainability, durability and carbon footprint of products. It also highlights that market transparency is a tool that promotes the adoption of technologically and environmentally superior net-zero products.

The coordinated screening of websites for ‘greenwashing’ (‘sweep’) that was carried out by the Commission and Consumer Protection Cooperation Network authorities in 2020 to detect misleading environmental claims confirmed the prevalence of vague, exaggerated, false or deceptive green claims. It confirmed the need to strengthen the rules to facilitate enforcement in this area. A 2020 Commission study on environmental claims in the EU assessed 150 environmental claims and found that a sizeable share (53.3 %) provide vague, misleading or unfounded information on products’ environmental characteristics across the EU and in a wide range of product groups (both in advertising and on the product).

To address this problem, the EU has proposed various legal initiatives aiming to ensure that environmental labels and claims are credible and trustworthy, allowing consumers to make informed purchasing decisions and boosting the competitiveness of businesses that strive to increase the environmental sustainability of their products and activities.

Empowering consumers to make informed decisions is a fundamental part of the European Green Deal. In 2020, the adoption of the new consumer agenda to strengthen consumer resilience for sustainable recovery stressed the need to empower consumers ‘to make informed choices and play an active role in the green and digital transition’.

In 2022, the Commission put forth a proposal for a directive on empoweringconsumers for the green transitionthat aims to bolster consumer rights in order to facilitate informed choices and actively contribute to the shift towards a climate-neutral society. The proposal amends the unfair commercial practices directive (UCPD) and the consumer rights directive to empower consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair commercial practices and better information. The proposal includes additional specific rules on environmental claims and the prohibition of misleading advertising. It includes a tool to prevent greenwashing and related unfair commercial practices, and new regulations on the evidence that businesses must provide to back up their environmental claims. Along with promoting more sustainable consumption and enabling consumers to make informed decisions, it also aims to stop unfair business practices that might have gone unnoticed in the past. The proposal was adopted in February 2024.

To further combat greenwashing and misleading advertisements, on 22 March 2023 the Commission adopted a proposal for a directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims, known as the green claims directive. It aims to create the first detailed set of EU rules for substantiating voluntary green claims and regulate the use of environmental claims in marketing communications in the EU. The directive includes rules for companies making environmental claims, including an obligation to be supported by scientific evidence, such as a ‘product environmental footprint’ framework that tracks environmental impacts across 16 categories, including air pollution and climate change. The proposed directive would apply to almost all businesses operating in the EU, with the exception of microenterprises (which have fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover of less than EUR 2 million), and would apply to all products and services sold in the EU.

This proposal complements the above proposal on empowering consumers for the green transition by providing more specific rules on environmental claims, in addition to a general prohibition of misleading advertising.

According to the explanatory memorandum to the green claims directive, the proposal is designed to act as a safety net for all sectors in which environmental claims or labels are unregulated at the EU level. While the revised UCPD covers all voluntary business-to-consumer commercial practices before, during and after a commercial transaction in relation to a product, the scope of this proposal covers the substantiation and communication of voluntary environmental claims. In the same way, the abovementioned proposal on empowering consumers for the green transition deals with sustainability labels that cover environmental or social aspects or both. This green claims directive would be limited to environmental labels only.

Both proposals define greenwashing or an ‘environmental claim’ as any message or representation that is not mandatory under EU law or national law, including text, pictorial, graphic or symbolic representation, in any form, including labels, brand names, company names or product names, in the context of a commercial communication, which states or implies that a product or trader has a positive impact or no impact on the environment or is less damaging to the environment than other products or traders, respectively, or has improved their impact over time.

The consumer protection cooperation regulation lays down a cooperation framework to allow national authorities in the European Economic Area to jointly address breaches of consumer rules when the trader and the consumer are established in different countries. While green statements made by a company could influence consumers across borders, evidence of the implementation of this cooperation framework did not emerge in this research.

Finally, the representative actions directive (RAD), adopted in 2020, aims to ensure protection of consumers’ collective interests. The directive sets minimum requirements with respect to collective actions on a wide range of topics. It is principle-based, with a fair margin of discretion regarding implementation left to the Member States. The RAD should have been transposed by all EU Member States by December 2022, and entered into force in June 2023. By January 2023, however, the Commission announced that only three Member States had properly transposed the RAD into their national legislation on time.

The EU’s commitment to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) aligns with its commitments to sustainability, including to environmental and consumer protection. The SDGs include SDG 12, which aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. The first EU voluntary review on the implementation of the 2030 agenda confirmed how the Commission’s policy priorities such as the European Green Deal contribute to the global and domestic transformations required to achieve the SDGs.

The Aarhus Convention (1998) is a treaty adopted under the aegis of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. It covers access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters. It links environmental rights and human rights and acknowledges that sustainable development can be achieved only with the involvement of all stakeholders, including consumers. It also guarantees the right to receive environmental information held by public authorities, which can help consumers make informed environmental choices. In addition, the convention establishes that every person has the right to live in an environment adequate for their health and well-being, which includes protection from environmental harm caused by consumer products.

The convention provides that each state party shall develop mechanisms with a view to ensuring that sufficient product information is made available to the public in a manner that enables consumers to make informed environmental choices (see Section 1.5).

The United Nations Human Rights Council in 2011 unanimously endorsed the UN guiding principles on business and human right (UNGPs). They provide guidance for states and companies with respect to human rights. The UNGPs rest on three pillars: the state duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and access to remedy for victims of business-related abuses. While the UNGPs do not directly refer to the environment, they imply its protection owing to the environmental dimensions of certain human rights, as noted by the United Nations Environment Programme and OHCHR.

The EU has committed itself to promoting and implementing the UNGPs in various strategies and pieces of legislation. In 2011, the EU adopted a communication on a renewed EU strategy for corporate social responsibility and has since taken stock of its efforts to implement the UNGPs such as in the 2019 Commission staff working document Corporate social responsibility, responsible business conduct, and business and human rights – Overview of progress.

The OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises on responsible business conduct are soft law that cover key areas of business responsibility, including consumer and environmental interests. In 2023, these OECD guidelines were updated to respond to urgent social, environmental and technological priorities facing societies and businesses. While they do not have the binding legal force of treaties or laws, they represent a global standard for responsible business conduct, providing a framework for multinational enterprises to operate in a socially and environmentally responsible manner, and can help to build trust and confidence among consumers, investors and other stakeholders.

The environment features prominently in the OECD guidelines, with one chapter dedicated to enterprises’ environmental performance. The guidelines recommend that multinational enterprises align with internationally agreed goals on climate change, biodiversity and pollution, and include due diligence expectations on the environment. The guidelines also emphasise the importance of sound environmental management as an important part of sustainable development, seen as both a business responsibility and a business opportunity.

The National Contact Points (NCPs) receive complaints about alleged breaches of the guidelines. An NCP does not have judicial or enforcement powers but provides a platform to mediate between parties involved. Complaints can be brought by anyone who can demonstrate a credible interest in the subject matter [3] For examples and assessment of the efficiency of NCPs, see FRA, Business and Human Rights – Access to remedy, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020.
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The EU’s proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence (CSDDD) is also relevant for consumers and environmental information. The directive aims to foster sustainable and responsible corporate behaviour throughout global value chains by requiring companies to establish due diligence procedures to address adverse impacts. Due diligence entails a duty to identify, prevent, terminate, mitigate and account for adverse human rights and environmental impacts. The directive aims to assist companies in meeting the growing demand from consumers for ethical and environmentally sustainable products and help consumers to obtain information about the products they buy and the companies they support.

In January 2023, the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) came into effect, bringing about significant advancements in the regulations governing the disclosure of social and environmental information by companies. It will replace the non-financial reporting directive, which remains in force until companies are required to apply the new rules of the CSRD. It expands the scope of reporting requirements to a wider group of large companies. It also aims to ensure that investors and other stakeholders have access to the necessary information to evaluate the impact of companies on society and the environment, while also enabling investors to assess financial risks and opportunities arising from climate change and other sustainability concerns. The initial implementation of these new regulations will be required for the 2024 financial year.