The European Furniture Industries Confederation (EFIC) welcomes the opportunity to provide comments to the ongoing consultation on the Proposal for a Directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive). The Furniture sector is in favour of actions to protect the market from greenwashing and advocates for harmonized rules at EU level. Please see below our comments, recommendations and open questions on the proposal. EFIC key concerns are related to Articles 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 17 of the proposal.
Summary
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The furniture industry recommends that the definitions are aligned across all EU legislation, including the proposal for a Directive amending Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU, and other pieces of legislation that are being adopted at the moment, such as the future Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
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Rules on corporate environmental claims rules must be coherent with the corporate sustainability reporting obligations established in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
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‘Business-to-consumers’ commercial practices must be defined, as well as the rules that will apply to business-to-business commercial practices.
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Regarding ‘widely recognized scientific evidence’ (Article 3.1(b)), clarity is needed about what is considered as “widely recognized” and how companies should assess this.
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It seems that explicit environmental claims should be compared with common practices. Legal requirements should be regarded as common practice, unless a majority of the products perform better than the requirements of the law. Clarification is needed with regards to what should apply.
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Clarification is needed regarding how traders can show/prove that their environmental claims do not lead to significant harm on climate change, resource consumption and circularity, etc.
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Environmental labels must comply with articles 3 to 6. Clarification is needed regarding the impact of this Directive on some type 1 labels that do not have an LCA-approach, such as EU Ecolabel and Nordic Swan, and to the possibility for type 1 labels to expand with new types of products.
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The furniture industry welcomes EU harmonization of scoring systems, and recommends that other (e.g. private) schemes are accepted when they fulfil certain criteria.
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Clarity is needed with regards to investigation and sanctions applied to a company, but also on the division of the liability between companies and verifiers. Articles 10 and 15 leave most of the responsibility to Member States, which could lead to an unclear regulatory environment.
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The cost/waiting time in the procedure, uncertainties on the recognition of the verified claims can lead to companies not bearing the risk to communicate about their environmental goals/results. While the industry agrees with the principle embedded in this legislation, a reasonable level of expectations and legal certainty is needed.