The EU Just Agreed How It Will Enforce the Green Claims Ban. "Dialogue First" Isn't a Free Pass.

On 30 June 2026, the European Commission welcomed a “Common Understanding” agreed inside the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, the group of national regulators who will police the EU’s new green claims rules. The story ran in a handful of Brussels outlets and a wave of law firm briefings, and most of them led with the same line: the EU is going to enforce the ban on generic green claims with “dialogue over sanctions.”

If you sell into the EU, including from the UK, that line is easy to misread. It sounds like a reprieve. It sounds like the 27 September deadline just got softer. It isn’t, and it didn’t.

What the regulators actually agreed is narrower and more specific than the headlines suggest. They agreed to be reasonable about the practical mess of changeover, the stock already sitting in warehouses, the packaging that takes months to redesign, the products that can’t be reformulated overnight. They did not agree to go easy on claims that were never true in the first place. That distinction is the whole story, and it is the part most coverage skated over.

This piece breaks down what the Common Understanding says, what EU green claims enforcement will actually look like from September, and why “dialogue first” only helps the businesses that can show they were trying.

What actually changed on 30 June

Nothing about the rules changed. That is the first thing to be clear about.

The Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, usually shortened to ECGT, is Directive (EU) 2024/825. It amends two existing pieces of EU consumer law, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the Consumer Rights Directive. Member states had to write it into national law by 27 March 2026, and it applies from 27 September 2026. There is no formal transition period built into the text. That deadline has not moved.

What changed on 30 June is that the national enforcement authorities, working through the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, agreed a shared approach to how they will apply the rules once they bite. The Commission called it a “Common Understanding” and said it would smooth the transition to the tighter regime.

In plain terms: 27 member states, each with their own regulator, agreed not to enforce the same rules 27 different ways. That is worth something. A UK business selling into France, Germany and the Netherlands now has a better chance of facing one consistent standard rather than three contradictory ones. Coordination is the actual news here, and it mostly works in your favour.

What “dialogue over sanctions” really covers

Here is where the reading gets sloppy in most coverage.

The Common Understanding says regulators will weigh the “genuine practical difficulties” companies face during changeover. It names three specifically: the volume of goods already manufactured, the shelf life of those goods, and the technical limits on adapting existing products. Where a business can properly justify those difficulties, regulators said they would prioritise preventive steps, issuing guidance or clarifications, before reaching for penalties.

Read that carefully. The leniency is about logistics, not about honesty.

If you have 40,000 units of packaging printed with the word “eco-friendly” and it will take you until early 2027 to sell through and redesign, that is a practical difficulty a regulator has now said it will take into account. That is genuinely useful, and it is a fair acknowledgement that a hard cut-off with no transition period was always going to catch honest businesses mid-cycle.

But if your claim was vague, unsubstantiated or misleading to begin with, none of that changes. “We couldn’t relabel in time” is a defence about timing. It is not a defence about the claim itself. A business that never had evidence for “environmentally friendly” does not get to point at its warehouse and call it a practical difficulty. The problem there was never the packaging. It was the claim.

So the softening is real, but it is doing far less than the headlines imply. It buys time for the mechanics of compliance. It buys nothing for a claim that doesn’t stand up.

The rules the enforcement applies to

It is worth restating what is actually being enforced, because the enforcement stance only makes sense against the substance.

From 27 September 2026, the ECGT bars traders from using generic environmental claims, terms like “environmentally friendly”, “eco”, “green” or “climate neutral”, unless they can demonstrate recognised, excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim. Vague good intentions are not enough. You need evidence, and the evidence has to match the claim.

It also restricts sustainability labels. Self-created or self-certified badges, the kind a company invents for its own products and awards to itself, are no longer acceptable unless they sit on a recognised certification scheme or are established by a public authority.

And it addresses one of the most common claims of the last decade: carbon neutral based on offsetting. Claims that a product is “carbon neutral”, “net zero” or similar, where the basis is buying offsets rather than actually reducing emissions, are prohibited at product level. This is the same direction of travel the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has been moving in for the past two years, so for once the two regimes are pointing the same way.

If you have read our earlier piece on the 27 September deadline, this is the substance underneath it. The Common Understanding is about how that substance gets policed, not what it says.

What enforcement looks like in practice, and what it can cost

“Dialogue first” does not mean “no consequences.” It means a sequence.

The likely pattern is this. A regulator identifies a claim it considers misleading, whether through its own monitoring, a competitor complaint or a consumer organisation flagging it. For a business that can show it is mid-changeover and acting in good faith, the first contact is more likely to be guidance or a request to correct than an immediate fine. For a business with no evidence, no plan and no response, dialogue is simply the first step on the way to enforcement.

The penalties themselves are set at national level, because the ECGT works through existing consumer law that each member state has already transposed. For widespread infringements that affect consumers in several member states, the EU framework sets a floor. Under Directive (EU) 2019/2161, fines for widespread infringements can reach at least 4 percent of a trader’s annual turnover in the member states concerned, or up to two million euros where turnover cannot be established. National transpositions can, and in some cases do, go higher.

Two things follow from that. First, the 4 percent is a minimum ceiling for the most serious cross-border cases, not a routine fine for a single slip. Second, turnover-based penalties are designed to scale, which means they are not only a big-company problem. An SME with meaningful EU sales has meaningful EU turnover, and that is what the percentage bites on.

The reputational cost usually arrives before the fine does. A public ruling, a corrected claim, a competitor pointing at it. That tends to do more damage to an SME than the penalty line itself.

Why the soft-touch framing is a trap for SMEs

Here is the part worth sitting with.

When a regulator says it will favour dialogue and preventive steps, the natural response for a stretched small business is relief, followed by deprioritisation. It goes to the bottom of the list. There is no fixed transition period, no immediate fine, and a friendly-sounding word like “dialogue.” Easy to assume you have time.

But dialogue cuts both ways. A regulator that opens a conversation is also opening a file. Everything you say, and everything you can’t show, goes into it. The businesses that benefit from a preventive-first approach are the ones that turn up to that conversation with something to demonstrate: a claims audit, a substantiation trail, a changeover plan with dates. The businesses that get hurt are the ones who mistook a softer enforcement tone for a reason to do nothing, and then have nothing to put on the table when the conversation starts.

“Dialogue over sanctions” rewards preparation. It punishes the assumption that you don’t need to prepare. Those are not the same thing, and the gap between them is exactly where a lot of SMEs are about to fall.

What to do before 27 September

You have a defined window and a clear set of moves. None of them require a sustainability team. They require a couple of focused days and a willingness to be honest about what you can actually back up.

Start by listing every environmental claim you make to EU consumers. Website, packaging, product pages, ads, social, email footers. If a customer in the EU can see it, it counts. Most businesses underestimate how many claims they have, because the claims accumulate across channels over years and nobody ever pulls them into one place.

For each claim, ask a blunt question: can I prove this, right now, with evidence a regulator would accept? Not “do I believe it” or “did the supplier tell me.” Can I show it. Sort your claims into three piles. Substantiated and specific, keep. Vague or generic, rewrite or remove. Unprovable, remove now.

Deal with the self-awarded labels. If you have a green badge you created yourself, it needs to go or be replaced with a recognised certification. This is one of the clearest lines in the directive and one of the easiest to get caught on.

Then, for anything you genuinely cannot change in time, document why. This is where the Common Understanding actually helps you. Write down the practical difficulty, the volume of existing stock, the shelf life, the redesign timeline, and the date you expect to be compliant. That record is the difference between “we’re mid-changeover and here’s the plan” and “we didn’t get to it.” One is a defence. The other is an admission.

Finally, decide who owns this. In an SME it is usually whoever runs marketing or whoever runs the website. It does not matter who, as long as someone can answer a regulator’s first question without a scramble.

The honest read on all of this

The EU has not gone soft on greenwashing. It has gone practical about implementation, which is a different and frankly more mature thing. A hard deadline with no transition period was always going to catch good businesses mid-cycle, and acknowledging that is sensible regulation, not weakness.

The mistake would be to hear “dialogue first” and file this under “later.” The rules are real, the deadline hasn’t moved, and the leniency on offer is specifically reserved for businesses that can show they were trying. If you can demonstrate a plan, you are in a strong position. If you can’t, a softer enforcement tone just means the bad news arrives as a conversation rather than a letter.

Either way, the work is the same. Know what you’re claiming. Be able to prove it. Fix or remove what you can’t. That was true before 30 June and it’s true after.

FAQ

Does the EU green claims ban apply to UK businesses?

Yes, if you sell to consumers in the EU. The ECGT applies to traders directing commercial practices at EU consumers, regardless of where the trader is based. A UK business selling into the EU, through its own site, a marketplace or a distributor, is within scope. Being outside the EU does not put you outside the rules.

Has the 27 September 2026 deadline changed?

No. The Common Understanding agreed on 30 June is about how national regulators will enforce the rules, not when the rules apply. The ECGT still applies from 27 September 2026, with no formal transition period in the text.

What does “dialogue over sanctions” actually mean for me?

It means that where you face genuine practical difficulties in changing over, such as existing stock, product shelf life or technical limits on reformulating, regulators have agreed to prioritise guidance and corrections before penalties, provided you can justify the difficulty. It does not mean unsubstantiated or misleading claims will be tolerated. The leniency is about the logistics of compliance, not the honesty of the claim.

What claims are actually banned?

Generic environmental claims without evidence of recognised excellent performance, such as “eco-friendly” or “green” used loosely. Self-created or self-certified sustainability labels not backed by a recognised scheme. And product-level “carbon neutral” or “net zero” claims based on offsetting rather than actual emissions reductions.

How big can the fines be?

Penalties are set nationally. For widespread infringements affecting consumers across several member states, EU rules set a floor of at least 4 percent of the trader’s annual turnover in the member states concerned, or up to two million euros where turnover cannot be established. Some national laws go higher. Turnover-based penalties scale with the size of your EU business, so this is not only a large-company concern.

I only have a few green claims. Do I still need to do this?

Yes, and it will take you less time than a larger business. A short claims audit, honest evidence check, and a note on anything you can’t change in time is proportionate to what you have. The businesses that get caught out are usually the ones that assumed “a few claims” meant “nothing to check.”

My Green Comms helps SMEs cut through sustainability regulation and communicate with credibility. If you’re unsure whether your current claims stand up to scrutiny, get in touch, we’ll tell you what we think.

Download our free 10-point claim check or test your own claims for free.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have concerns about your legal accountability for environmental claims, speak to a qualified solicitor.