In brief
If your business makes environmental claims about its products or services in Spain, the countdown is over. The provisions of Directive (EU) 2024/825 on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition become applicable on 27 September 2026, and they change how "green", "eco-friendly" or "climate neutral" can be used in commercial communications.
In more detail
The Spanish angle matters. The national legislation intended to transpose the new requirements is still progressing through the legislative process, but the deadline for Member States has already passed, and the EU rules become applicable across the internal market regardless. Businesses should not take comfort from the delay at national level: the exposure is real, and it lands on marketing, packaging and e-commerce content that is already in the market today. It is also worth remembering that the current Spanish framework, even if it works with broad and open-ended legal concepts, already allows authorities to sanction claims that are misleading to consumers. The fact that the transposing legislation is still in preparation does not mean there is no enforcement risk in Spain today.
What is changing? The five claims that become high risk
The Directive does not prohibit environmental claims outright, nor does it prevent businesses from communicating their investments in environmental initiatives. Instead, introduces a significantly stricter framework for environmental claims and makes a specific set of practices unlawful:
- Sustainability labels not based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority.
- Carbon neutrality claims based on offsetting or compensation schemes.
- Claims about future environmental performance or commitments, unless backed by a clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable implementation plan.
- Claims about a whole product, activity or business where the environmental benefit concerns only one specific aspect of it.
- Generic claims such as "green" or "eco-friendly", unless based on recognised excellent environmental performance or accompanied by the specific benefit in the same communication.
These prohibitions apply across a wide spectrum of commercial communications, from product packaging and in-store labelling to advertising campaigns, websites, and social media content. In practice, most companies discover that the difficult cases are not the obvious ones, they are the legacy claims nobody has revisited in years.
The question most clients ask first: what about existing stock?
Existing stock that remains available to consumers after 27 September 2026 also falls within the scope of the new requirements.
That said, enforcement is expected to take a proportionate and pragmatic approach. National authorities are likely to consider whether businesses have taken reasonable and demonstrable steps to achieve compliance before the deadline, rather than requiring the immediate withdrawal or destruction of all non-compliant stock. There is also a certain logic to this: withdrawing and destroying perfectly usable goods and packaging over a wording issue would generate avoidable waste and emissions, and would itself run counter to the environmental objectives the Directive is designed to promote.
That makes documentation the decisive factor. Companies that can evidence a structured review (what was assessed, what was corrected, and on what timeline) are in a materially different position from those that cannot. Building that record is not complicated, but it needs to start now and be done with the right criteria.
It does not stop at consumer law
Green claims sit on top of an increasingly detailed product compliance framework. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU) 2025/40 establish, or provide the framework for, requirements on durability, repairability, recyclability and recycled content.
The practical consequence is often overlooked: even where existing products or packaging may lawfully remain on the market, the way they are presented to consumers must still be reviewed. A recyclability or durability claim must match the technical documentation, the supply-chain evidence and the mandatory product information behind it. Reconciling the two is where most internal reviews stall. The general rules are also only the starting point: product-specific and packaging-specific legislation has to be checked alongside them, and national rules in areas such as packaging may go further and be considerably more concrete on what can be claimed about recyclability (this is the case, for example, in Spain).
What regulators will expect from 27 September 2026
Enforcement authorities are unlikely to assess environmental claims in a regulatory vacuum. The European Commission, together with national consumer protection authorities, has already issued guidance and carried out coordinated enforcement actions in the area of green claims and consumer protection. These materials provide a clear indication of the standards that regulators are expected to apply when assessing the accuracy, transparency and substantiation of sustainability-related marketing claims.
For companies operating in Spain and other EU markets, the Directive is a baseline rather than the full benchmark. Claims also need to be measured against applicable national rules, regulatory guidance and enforcement practice, particularly where these go further than the EU framework.
Are you complying?
The message from the EU legislator is clear: environmental claims must be genuine, transparent, specific, verifiable and supported. Delivering that in practice requires closer coordination between Marketing, Legal, Regulatory, Sustainability and Product teams, and a substantiation process that is applied before a claim goes live – not after a complaint arrives.
Most businesses we speak with are not starting from zero; they simply need to know which of their existing claims are defensible, which are not, and how to prioritise the gap. A focused review of your current communications, packaging and product documentation will usually answer that in a matter of days.
If you would like to discuss how these rules apply to your claims in Spain, or to walk through a practical review of your sustainability messaging and the evidence behind it, our team would be glad to help. Get in touch with your usual contact at the firm or with any of the authors below.
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Inés Derraz and Berta Cabañas, Associates, have contributed to this legal update.