The EmpCo Directive, Explained

From 27 September 2026, calling a product “eco-friendly” without evidence is not a marketing choice. It is a violation.

The European Commission's own investigation found that more than half of environmental claims made in the EU are vague, misleading or unsubstantiated. The Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, formally Directive (EU) 2024/825 and generally shortened to EmpCo, is the law written specifically to close that gap. It does not create a new regulatory regime from scratch. It amends two directives every consumer-facing company already has to comply with, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the Consumer Rights Directive, and adds unsubstantiated environmental claims to the list of practices that now count as unfair.

What EmpCo actually bans

The directive does not ban sustainability claims. It bans the ones nobody can back up, the practice we've covered before as greenwashing. Five specific practices move from a grey area to explicitly prohibited:

• Generic claims without proof. “Eco-friendly,” “green,” “sustainable” and similar terms are prohibited unless the trader can demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance behind the specific claim being made.
• Offset-only neutrality claims. “Carbon neutral” or “climate positive” claims based solely on offsetting are banned unless the scope, the methodology and independent verification of both the underlying impact and the offsets are disclosed alongside the claim.
• Unverified sustainability labels. A label can only be used if it comes from a publicly recognised certification scheme or is established by a public authority. Privately invented labels with no independent verification behind them are out.
• Future targets without a plan. “Carbon neutral by 2030” now requires a concrete, publicly available implementation plan with measurable, time-bound targets and independent verification, not the sentence on its own.
• Planned obsolescence and durability claims. The directive also prohibits practices that shorten product life without disclosure, and requires pre-purchase information on durability, repairability, spare parts and software update periods.

The timeline is shorter than it looks

EmpCo entered into force on 26 March 2024, which is why some companies believe they still have plenty of time. They do not have much left:

• 27 September 2025 – the Commission specified the design of the new harmonised EU durability label.
• 27 March 2026 – the deadline for every EU member state to transpose the directive into national law.
• 27 September 2026 – the directive becomes enforceable across the EU. Every claim made from this date is judged against it.
• 27 September 2031 – the Commission's scheduled review of how the directive has worked in practice.

Transposition lands in seven months, enforcement six months after that. Marketing copy, product pages and packaging written today will still be live when enforcement starts.

Who is actually in scope

This is where EmpCo differs from CSRD in a way that catches people off guard. CSRD scopes companies in by size. EmpCo scopes them in by audience: it applies to any company marketing products or services to consumers in the EU, regardless of size or country of establishment. A ten-person company selling direct to EU consumers online is in scope in exactly the same way a listed group is. Non-EU companies advertising into the EU are covered too.

The penalties are not symbolic. Fines reach up to 4% of annual turnover in the relevant member state, or a minimum of €2 million where turnover data is unavailable, on top of the reputational cost of a claim being publicly struck down.

Where the marketing claim meets the reporting system

The directive's own language is the useful part: claims have to be “specific, evidence-based and traceable.” That is not a marketing standard. It is a data standard, and it is the same one CSRD and ESRS already impose on sustainability reporting. A “30% emissions reduction” on a product page and the same figure in an ESRS-aligned report cannot be two different numbers with two different audit trails.

Companies already running structured sustainability data collection, the kind that keeps a source, a method and an approval history attached to every figure, are not starting EmpCo compliance from zero. They can trace a marketing claim back to the same underlying data a report already stands behind. Companies still assembling that evidence by hand in spreadsheets and email threads are the ones who will find, in September 2026, that a line their marketing team has used for years no longer has anywhere to point.