Green without evidence

Directive (EU) 2024/825 carries a name hardly anyone says out loud: "empowering consumers for the green transition", EmpCo for short. Article 4 sets two dates. By 27 March 2026 the Member States had to adopt their measures, and "they shall apply those measures from 27 September 2026". In Germany transposition runs through the Unfair Competition Act (UWG).

What the directive does is technically unspectacular and considerable in effect: it writes four new numbers into Annex I of the UCPD 2005/29/EC, the blacklist of practices that are unfair in all circumstances.

Four numbers on the blacklist

No. 2a: displaying a sustainability label "that is not based on a certification scheme or not established by public authorities". The self-designed green leaf next to the product photo is done for.

No. 4a: "making a generic environmental claim for which the trader is not able to demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim". Recital 9 names the words: "environmentally friendly", "eco-friendly", "green", "nature’s friend", "ecological", "environmentally correct", "climate friendly".

No. 4b: an environmental claim "about the entire product or the trader’s entire business" when it concerns only a certain aspect. The packaging is recycled, so the product is sustainable: exactly that.

No. 4c: a claim "based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions, that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions". The recitals name "climate neutral", "certified CO2 neutral", "climate compensated".

Added to that is an insertion in Article 6: a claim about future environmental performance is misleading "without clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments" in an implementation plan with measurable, time-bound targets. "Climate neutral by 2035" needs, from that day, a plan one can read.

Why this concerns IT

Two reasons. The first sits in the same directive, in numbers 23d to 23j: whoever withholds that a software update will worsen the device, presents a functionality update as necessary or presents a good as repairable when it is not, also acts unfairly. That is the bridge to the Cyber Resilience Act, from the consumer side.

The second reason is more mundane. The claims at stake do not sit in a document someone approved. They sit on the website: in product copy, on the about page, in PDFs from 2019, in the meta description nobody reads any more, in an accordion that only opens on click. Nobody holds an 800-page website in their head, and the question "where does our site say sustainable" has no owner in most organisations.

What the module makes of it

The environmental claims module in isidaten crawls your own website with all subpages: via sitemaps and internal links, with page and depth caps, robots.txt, redirects checked per hop against SSRF protection, identical pages as duplicates, linked PDFs read along. The crawl runs server-side with a headless browser or HTTP, or through the isidaten agent from the agent’s location, in which case the server needs no internet access.

Every finding is assessed in context: risk class, the rule that triggered, the missing evidence, a recommendation, an alternative wording. Hits without secured context are called "automatic, context open", not "critical". Identical claims on twenty pages are one duplicate group and one decision. The path analysis shows in which sections of the site critical claims cluster, and an Excel file with URL inventory, findings, catalogue, management overview and crawl log is what goes to the legal department.

Because that is the limit: the analysis is a structured preliminary check. It separates finding of fact, risk assessment and recommendation and replaces no legal review. It ensures the legal review receives a list instead of a website.

The question to ask

How many pages does your website have, and on how many of them does it say "sustainable", "climate neutral" or "eco-friendly"?

If you do not know the first number, you do not know the second either.

Sources

Directive (EU) 2024/825, Article 1 (amending Directive 2005/29/EC, in particular Art. 6(2)(d) and Annex I nos. 2a, 4a, 4b, 4c, 23d to 23j), Article 4 (transposition by 27 March 2026, application from 27 September 2026), recitals 9 and 12. Date in the compliance calendar.