ARTICLE3 December 2020

EU proposal on green claims

Swedish Enterprise has participated in the EU public consultation on a potential legislative proposal on substantiating green claims.

Jenny Svärd
Photo: Ulf Börjesson/Ernst Henry Photography AB

Swedish Enterprise has participated in the EU public consultation on a potential legislative proposal on substantiating green claims. The proposal lines out initiatives to establish a coherent policy framework for green claims to prevent greenwashing and help consumers – private, B2B and public – to make more sustainable choices. Thereby the Commission aims to reduce the environmental footprint of products consumed in the Union and thereby contribute to the overall policy objective of EU climate neutrality by 2050. In the consultation, attached below, Swedish Enterprise emphasizes the following standpoints:

- Environmental information must be reliable, specific, verifiable, comparable, useful and based on shared methodologies. PEF however is not yet fully developed for all products and will in many cases be complex to use.

- As a first step a voluntary approach of the use of PEF is needed. It is too early to introduce legal requirements for substantiating green claims based on PEF. Specific sector prerequisites need to be considered.

- PEF is not yet enough developed for all products to be used to set criteria for best in class labels. In communication a 5-level scale is preferable over av 3-level scale. Ecolabel should not only be available for top performance in PEF.

- A central body at EU-level verifying all PEFs will not be effective, a national body risks hampering the inner market. Best solution, an independent certification/verification organization operating in accordance with ISO 14025.

- Create an EU life cycle inventory secondary database in cooperation with national databases with EF-compliant data. Crucial that national data as well as industries can contribute to the database.
 

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Contact our EU Office

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Subscribe to our Swedish newsletter
Contact our EU Office

Address

Rue du Luxembourg 3
BE-1000 Bruxelles
Subscribe to our Swedish newsletter
Contact our EU Office

Address

Rue du Luxembourg 3
BE-1000 Bruxelles
Subscribe to our Swedish newsletter
Publisher and editor-in-chief Anna Dalqvist