Italy Closes the Greenwashing Loophole: New EU Rules on "Green" Claims Take Effect

For years, a product could carry the word "eco" or "green" on its packaging with almost nothing behind it. As of 27 September, that changes in Italy. A new legislative decree transposing EU Directive 2024/825 — known as the "Consumer Empowerment for the Green Transition" directive — has taken effect, rewriting the rules on how companies are allowed to talk about sustainability, as reported by ANSA's ASviS channel.

The directive itself was approved by the European Parliament and Council back in February 2024, but Italy only formalised its own version on 20 February 2026, through Legislative Decree No. 30, which amends the national Consumer Code. The gap between EU approval and national enforcement is exactly the kind of loophole the rules are now designed to close.

Why regulators moved

The trigger for the crackdown was not abstract. A coordinated sweep by EU consumer authorities in 2020 examined 344 environmental claims made online and found that 37 per cent used vague, unsubstantiated language, 59 per cent offered no accessible evidence to back up what they claimed, and close to half showed signs of being false or misleading outright. Those numbers gave regulators the evidence base to move from guidance to enforceable law.

What companies can no longer say

Under the new rules, generic labels such as "green," "eco," "environmentally friendly" or "biodegradable" are off-limits unless a company can demonstrate genuinely superior environmental performance to back them up. Claiming a whole product is sustainable because one component — packaging, say — is recyclable is now explicitly prohibited, as is presenting a legally required feature as if it were a voluntary environmental achievement. Misleading colour schemes, leaf icons or imagery that imply a green credential the product does not actually have are also banned outright.

The climate-specific provision is arguably the sharpest change. Companies can no longer market a product as "climate neutral," "CO2 neutral" or having "reduced climate impact" purely on the basis of purchased carbon credits or offsets elsewhere in the world. Offsetting itself is not banned — businesses can keep buying credits — but they can no longer imply the underlying product itself now produces fewer emissions as a result. Any future environmental commitment a company makes in its marketing must now come with a public, measurable target, a defined timeline, and independent third-party verification, and voluntary sustainability labels must be tied to a recognised certification scheme or a public authority rather than invented in-house.

Enforcement through the Consumer Code

Because the directive was transposed directly into Italy's Consumer Code, breaches become a consumer-protection matter rather than a voluntary code of conduct, giving Italian authorities the same enforcement tools they already use against other forms of misleading commercial practice. That institutional weight is what separates this from the patchwork of earlier voluntary ESG-reporting frameworks: a false "climate neutral" label is now, in principle, treated the same way as any other deceptive advertising claim.

The bigger picture

The change lands at a moment when sustainability claims have become a genuine point of competitive differentiation, which is exactly what made the old, loosely policed language so easy to abuse. By forcing every "green" claim to be provable, timed and independently checked, Italy's implementation of the directive aims to reward companies that have actually invested in cleaner production, while stripping the marketing advantage from those that were merely describing themselves that way.

The ban on unverified "climate neutral" labelling is the part worth watching closely. Offsetting has quietly become a way for companies to claim progress without actually cutting emissions from their own operations — closing that loophole doesn't stop offsetting, but it does stop it being mistaken for decarbonisation, which is a meaningful distinction for climate accounting everywhere, not just in Italy.