Green claims in Germany: what changes on September 27, 2026 for a product page

From September 27, 2026, twelve practices become unfair in all circumstances when you talk about the environment or durability to a European consumer. They join a blacklist, where establishing the practice is enough. Germany transposed the directive back in February 2026. For a publisher running product pages in Germany, the difficulty is not the text: it is that nobody there waits for a regulator to enforce it.

The name everyone uses belongs to a text that is not law yet

There is nothing wrong with saying "Green Claims Directive." It is the official short title, printed in parentheses in the document itself. The problem is which document. It belongs to COM(2023) 166 of March 22, 2023, "Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive)." That text is still a proposal. It binds no one.

The text that applies on September 27, 2026 is a different instrument: Directive (EU) 2024/825 of February 28, 2024, "amending Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU as regards empowering consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair practices and through better information." It carries no official short title at all. That is almost certainly why it inherited its neighbor's.

The confusion has a practical consequence. Anyone who looks up their obligations under the Green Claims Directive reads a proposal and misses the directive that binds them on September 27. Article 4 of 2024/825, headed "Transposition," is unambiguous: Member States adopt and publish the necessary measures "by 27 March 2026," and "shall apply those measures from 27 September 2026." Article 5, often cited in its place, covers only the directive's own entry into force on the twentieth day after publication.

Twelve prohibitions added to the blacklist

2024/825 does not create a standalone regime. It inserts twelve points into Annex I of Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices, the annex everyone calls the blacklist. What sits there is unfair in all circumstances, with no need to show that the consumer's decision was distorted. That is the difference between arguing a case and pointing at a list.

Environmental claims

• 2a. Displaying a sustainability label that is not based on a certification scheme or not established by public authorities.
• 4a. Making a generic environmental claim for which the trader is not able to demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim.
• 4b. Making an environmental claim about the entire product or the trader's entire business when it concerns only a certain aspect of the product or a specific activity of the trader's business.
• 4c. Claiming, based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions, that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
• 10a. Presenting requirements imposed by law on all products within the relevant product category on the Union market as a distinctive feature of the trader's offer.

Durability, repairability, software updates

• 23d. Withholding information from the consumer about the fact that a software update will negatively impact the functioning of goods with digital elements or the use of digital content or digital services.
• 23e. Presenting a software update as necessary when it only enhances functionality features.
• 23f. Any commercial communication in relation to a good containing a feature introduced to limit its durability despite information on the feature and its effects on the durability of the good being available to the trader.
• 23g. Falsely claiming that under normal conditions of use a good has a certain durability in terms of usage time or intensity.
• 23h. Presenting a good as allowing repair when it does not.
• 23i. Inducing the consumer to replace or replenish the consumables of a good earlier than necessary for technical reasons.
• 23j. Withholding information concerning the impairment of the functionality of a good when consumables, spare parts or accessories not supplied by the original producer are used, or falsely claiming that such impairment will happen.

Four of these land directly on the copy of a product page. 4a targets vocabulary: "eco-friendly," "green," "environmentally friendly" used with nothing behind them. 4b targets the part standing for the whole, recyclable packaging quietly becoming a recyclable product. 4c targets carbon neutrality bought through offsetting, now off the table regardless of how good the offsetting program is. 10a targets the argument built on a legal requirement: "free from banned substance X" when X is banned for every product in the category on the Union market.

A note for anyone taking advice in Germany. The numbering above is the European one. German law renumbers: 2a, 4a, 4b, 4c and 10a match, but the seven durability points 23d to 23j are grouped under a single 23d, letters a) to g). A German lawyer will never look for "23i."

Three provisions outside the blacklist, easy to miss

Stopping at the blacklist leaves out the part of the text that catches product pages most often. The same directive also amends the body of 2005/29/EC, with the same application date.

• Article 6(2)(d). An environmental claim about future performance is misleading unless it rests on clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments, set out in a detailed and realistic implementation plan with measurable and time-bound targets, allocated resources, and regular verification by an independent third-party expert whose findings are made available to consumers. This is what happens to "carbon neutral by 2030."
• Article 6(2)(e). Advertising benefits to consumers that are irrelevant and do not result from any feature of the product or business. The legislator's own example is gluten-free bottled water.
• Article 7(7). A service comparing products on environmental, social or circularity characteristics must disclose its comparison method, the products compared, their suppliers, and the measures it takes to keep information up to date. These count as material information.

The difference in regime matters. These three are not on the blacklist: they call for a case-by-case assessment. But a climate commitment with no verifiable plan is still actionable, and by the same claimants.

In Germany, enforcement does not run through a regulator

The same European text lands very differently depending on who enforces it, and Germany is the outlier. Its unfair competition statute, the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG), runs on private action. Section 5(1) states the general rule: a trader acts unfairly by engaging in a misleading commercial practice capable of causing a consumer or other market participant to take a transactional decision they would not otherwise have taken. Subsection 2 adds that a practice is misleading when it contains untrue statements, including about the essential characteristics of the goods or service.

This regime covers images as well as words, and the statute says so expressly. Section 5(4) treats bildliche Darstellungen, pictorial representations, as "statements" within the meaning of subsection 2, on one condition: that they aim to replace such statements and are capable of doing so. A green leaf icon, a colored banner suggesting a certification that does not exist, a photograph built to say what the copy does not: all of these fall within its scope. From September 27 the German statute goes further still: its definition of Umweltaussage expressly covers representations "durch Text, Bilder, grafische Elemente oder Symbole," through text, images, graphic elements or symbols, brand names and product designations included.

So who acts? Competitors, and qualified trade associations. Section 8b puts the Bundesamt für Justiz, the Federal Office of Justice, in charge of maintaining and publishing the list of qualified trade associations. Being on the list is not enough on its own: section 8(3) no. 2 also requires that a significant number of member businesses sell goods of the same or a related kind on the same market, and that the infringement affects those members' interests. Broad conditions in practice, but conditions nonetheless. The first consequence of a non-compliant page arrives as an Abmahnung, a cease-and-desist letter from an instructed law firm, usually carrying a contractual penalty undertaking.

For an ordinary product page there is no authority to notify and no administrative grace period. The one administrative route in the UWG is narrow: section 19 provides for a fine of up to 4 percent of annual turnover and names the Bundesamt für Justiz as the competent authority, but only for a "widespread infringement" and only within a coordinated enforcement action under Article 21 of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394. In other words, that is not the channel your problem will arrive through.

Section 13(4) softens the private mechanism on one narrow point, and it pays to read it precisely rather than take false comfort from it. It excludes reimbursement of necessary costs for claimants under section 8(3) no. 1, meaning competitors, in two categories of breach: statutory information and labeling duties breached in electronic commerce or digital services, and certain GDPR breaches. The exclusion covers costs, not the action. The injunction stays available, and misleading environmental claims are not an information or labeling duty: they sit under section 5.

Germany has transposed, and its consolidated text does not show it yet

The question that settles everything for a page published in Germany is whether the country has transposed. It has, and the date is on the record. The Drittes Gesetz zur Änderung des Gesetzes gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb of February 12, 2026 was published in the Bundesgesetzblatt on February 19, 2026, as BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 43. Its first footnote says so plainly: "Dieses Gesetz dient der Umsetzung der Richtlinie (EU) 2024/825." Article 2 sets entry into force on September 27, 2026, with one exception that has been in force since June 19, 2026.

Reading the consolidated text still takes some care, or you will draw the wrong conclusion. On September 15, 2026, the UWG as published on gesetze-im-internet.de contained none of the words the reform introduces: a search for "2024/825," "Umweltaussage," "Nachhaltigkeit," "klimaneutral" and "Nachhaltigkeitssiegel" across sections 5, 5a, 5b, 5c, 13 and the annex returned zero hits. That is not German delay, it is how a consolidated text works: it shows the law in force, and the substance of the reform is not in force until September 27. The header does carry the trace of the statute, for anyone looking in the right place: "(+++ EU-Vollzitate: vgl. Liste EU-Rechtsakte G v. 12.2.2026 I Nr. 43 +++)." The status line reads "Zuletzt geändert durch Art. 6 G v. 12.5.2026 I Nr. 139," and it is that line, never the 2004 Ausfertigungsdatum, that tells you how current the online text is.

What the German statute will carry on September 27

• Section 2 gains legal definitions: Umweltaussage, allgemeine Umweltaussage, Nachhaltigkeitssiegel, anerkannte hervorragende Umweltleistung, Zertifizierungssystem, plus Haltbarkeit, Funktionalität and Betriebsstoff.
• Section 5(2) no. 1 adds ökologische oder soziale Merkmale and Zirkularitätsaspekte such as durability, repairability and recyclability to the list of essential characteristics. This is the textual answer to whether section 5 already covered the environment: from September 27 it will say so itself.
• Section 5(3) gains two new cases: advertising irrelevant benefits, and claiming future environmental performance without an implementation plan verified by an independent third party.
• Section 5b(3a) covers comparison services.
• The annex, which is the German blacklist, receives the new numbers.
• Section 19 is rewritten: a fine of up to 4 percent of annual turnover, where that turnover exceeds 1.25 million euros, still within the narrow frame described above.

One page can breach two separate regimes

A publisher producing pages with AI runs into a second calendar here, and the two get conflated constantly. They do not cover the same ground and they do not address the same people.

Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 requires, in Article 50(4), that deployers publishing text to inform the public on matters of public interest disclose that the text was AI-generated. That obligation carries a broad exemption, and most commentary reports only half of it: it does not apply where the content "has undergone a process of human review or editorial control and where a natural or legal person holds editorial responsibility for the publication of the content." Editorial control is a route of its own, standing beside piece-by-piece review.

Machine marking is a separate matter, and not the publisher's. Article 50(2) places it on providers of AI systems generating synthetic content, in a machine-readable format. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of July 8, 2026 added an Article 111(4) giving systems already on the market before August 2, 2026 until December 2, 2026 to comply. That date circulates as though it applied to publishers. It addresses providers of AI systems.

The distinction matters because the two regimes stack rather than substitute. A German product page promoting a "climate neutral" material on the basis of offsetting, written by an AI system with no identifiable editorial control, exposes its publisher to a competitor's action under section 5 UWG and to a transparency breach under Article 50. The first risk materializes in weeks, by letter from a law firm. The second depends on a supervisory authority that nobody has alerted yet.

Where to start the page review

A useful review is not a general proofread, it is a pattern search. Run it as queries against published content, not by eye.

1. Inventory the generic vocabulary. "Eco-friendly," "green," "environmentally friendly," "sustainable" standing alone. Each occurrence needs either evidence of recognized excellent environmental performance or a rewrite. On a catalog of a few hundred SKUs this is the pass that pays most. Point 4a.
2. Isolate carbon neutrality claims. Any wording resting on offsetting falls under 4c. Replace it with the actual measurement: emissions per unit, a reduction trajectory, a declared scope.
3. Put dated commitments through the plan test. "Carbon neutral by 2030," "plastic free by 2027" are not banned, they are conditional. Without a detailed plan, measurable and time-bound targets, allocated resources and published independent third-party verification, the claim is misleading under Article 6(2)(d), which becomes section 5(3) no. 4 in German law.
4. Check the scope of every claim. If the property belongs to the packaging, the page says packaging. Point 4b triggers on the implicit extension to the whole product.
5. Test every label against its origin. A certification visual has to trace back to a certification scheme or a public authority. An in-house label, however honest, falls under 2a.
6. Drop arguments built on the law. Compliance that is mandatory for every product in the category on the Union market is not a competitive advantage you can display.
7. Record who owns the publication. For Article 50, editorial control counts only if it is documented and a person stands behind it. A production chain that keeps timestamped revisions and distinguishes model output from human edits holds that evidence with no extra effort.

The first six points work on published content, through systematic search, language by language, and can be fixed after the fact. The seventh is about how production is organized, and it is the only one that cannot.

The translation trap

One point here gets expensive to ignore when the same catalog ships in several countries. A legal paragraph translated literally becomes false in the other country. A German page that describes the Abmahnung mechanism, translated into English for another market, tells a reader that competitors will sue them when their own market may work through a regulator instead. European numbering copied straight into a German note sends the reader hunting for a number that does not exist in their statute. A phrase that passes in one market because usage settled it can run into stricter case law on the same word in another.

The right granularity is not the language, it is the market. Eight language versions of a product page are eight pages to qualify, not one page translated eight times.

Frequently asked questions

Does the directive apply if I sell into Germany from outside the country?

As a rule, yes. Unfair competition law follows the market affected, not the place of establishment: that is the rule in Article 6(1) of the Rome II Regulation. A German-language page aimed at German consumers therefore falls under the German regime, wherever it is hosted or edited. The rule is not absolute: where an act of unfair competition affects exclusively the interests of a specific competitor, Article 6(2) refers back to the general conflict rule.

What actually happens on September 27, 2026?

National transposing provisions become applicable, under Article 4 of the directive. This is not the date national laws had to be published, which was March 27, 2026, but the date they start to apply. In Germany it is the entry into force set by Article 2 of the statute of February 12, 2026.

Can certified carbon offsetting still be used?

Point 4c does not ban offsetting. It bans deriving from it a claim that the product has a neutral, reduced or positive environmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Offsetting can be described for what it is, as something the company does, so long as it does not become a property of the product.

Can a packaging property be presented as a product property?

No, and that is exactly what point 4b addresses. It prohibits an environmental claim about the entire product or business when it concerns only one aspect of the product or one specific activity. Recyclable packaging is called "recyclable packaging," not "recyclable product."

Is "carbon neutral by 2030" still possible?

Yes, but on cumulative conditions. A future environmental performance claim must rest on clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments, set out in a detailed and realistic implementation plan with measurable and time-bound targets, allocated resources, and regular verification by an independent third-party expert whose findings are made available to consumers. Without that file, the phrase is misleading.

Should we wait for German transposition before acting?

It is done: the statute was published on February 19, 2026 and enters into force on September 27. There is nothing to wait for. And even before that date, the general clause of section 5 UWG applies to misleading claims, as German case law has developed it. Waiting buys no protection, it only delays the page review.

Sources

• Directive (EU) 2024/825 of February 28, 2024, full text and annex
• Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices, whose Annex I and Articles 6 and 7 are amended
• COM(2023) 166 final, the Green Claims Directive proposal, a separate instrument
• Drittes Gesetz zur Änderung des Gesetzes gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb of February 12, 2026, BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 43, the German transposition
• UWG section 5, section 8, section 8b, section 13 and section 19
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, consolidated version of July 27, 2026, Article 50 and Article 111(4)

This article describes the state of the law as of September 16, 2026. It is not legal advice.