Important to inform consumers correctly / Over-bureaucratic ideas by some in the Commission avoided

On Wednesday, the European Commission presented its proposal on so-called “green claims”. If a company claims that their product or service is in particular good for the environment, for example, that it is carbon neutral or uses 50% of recycled content, this should be sustained by appropriate evidence.

Peter Liese, environmental spokesperson for the largest group in the European Parliament (EPP, Christian Democrats) welcomed the proposal: “It is very important that if you claim that you product or service is environment friendly, you also have some evidence for this. It is important that consumers can easily identify environment and climate friendly products and be sure that these claims are true. The proposal will not only fight greenwashing but also harmonise the oversupply of about 230 ‘green’ labels currently found on the European market. This will benefit those companies that are actually moving in the right direction. Generally, I am very happy that the proposal is not over-bureaucratic. It would not be a good idea if a small or medium sized company had to hire consultants or pay high amounts of money to lawyers just to clarify that they do something that is positive but quite obvious,” said Liese. In an earlier draft, the Commission proposal was much more sophisticated and companies would have had a lot of bureaucratic burden.

On the additional proposal on the right to repair that was also presented on Wednesday, Liese said: “In principle, I support the proposal on the right to repair. It is important to develop products in such a way that they can be repaired more easily than before. This helps to conserve resources and save costs for consumers. However, we must carefully examine whether the proposal is appropriate in each case. The implementation of what is basically the right idea must not be too bureaucratic.”