Green Claims and Greenwashing: New Rules and Challenges for Businesses and Consumers

While effective regulation against greenwashing alone cannot guarantee sustainable consumption and production, it plays a crucial role in enabling it. Combatting greenwashing is important for several reasons: to empower consumers to make sustainable choices, to create a level playing field for market actors that truly invest in sustainability and, more broadly, to prevent unsustainable practices and choices from becoming further normalised. The Empowering Consumers Directive (EU) 2024/825 makes targeted amendments to the UCPD’s general prohibitions on misleading actions (Article 6) and omissions (Article 7) and adds new bans on specific greenwashing practices to the blacklist of Annex I UCPD. These new UCPD rules shall be implemented by 27 March 2026, and the Member States shall apply the implementing measures from 27 September 2026. Currently, the fate of the still pending Commission Proposal for a Green Claims Directive (COM(2023) 166 final) remains uncertain and no further progress towards its adoption could be made under the Danish presidency.

This book compiles various papers based on the presentations by distinguished scholars, practitioners, stakeholders and enforcers presented during two international conferences jointly organised by KU Leuven’s CCM and the University of Ferrara, in cooperation with the European Law Institute’s Sustainability and Environment Law Special Interest Group and the Consumer Empowerment Project (CEP). The first conference, on ‘Greenwashing – opportunities and challenges of the new EU rules’, took place in Leuven on 14 June 2024; the second one, on ‘Digital Fairness and Green Fairness – 20 Years Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’, took place in Ferrara on 4 April 2025.

The contributions tackle a wide variety of problems related to green claims and greenwashing in the European Union. They range from the theoretical foundations and limits of consumer law as a tool for pursuing sustainability objectives, to the regulation of sustainability labels, green claims and carbon offsetting, sector-specific applications such as aviation, interactions with trademark law, and the evolving landscape of public and private enforcement. Central questions addressed are: Which are the new pillars of consumer and market law in the sustainable transition? How to communicate sustainability efforts? What is the interaction between mandatory and voluntary communication of sustainability information? What are the opportunities and challenges in terms of compliance and enforcement? This book offers a broad perspective on the many facets of greenwashing, it provides in-depth analyses and concrete suggestions for improving the existing legal framework, alongside a critical assessment of the proposed GCD. In addition, it provides practical insights of great relevance to both businesses and enforcement authorities.