In our final week of the Annual Compliance conference, we focussed on key issues being faced by companies on ESG, supply chain and product compliance. Specifically, we discussed the new legal landscape in the EU and UK on product compliance and liability, supply chain due diligence trends and developments, and how to manage environmental, social and governance risks and increasing legislation in the US, UK and EU aimed at cracking down on vague, misleading, or unsubstantiated green claims.
The European Commission launched the European (EU) Green Deal in 2019. The EU Green Deal is a package of policy initiatives, one of which is a commitment to tackle false environmental claims by requiring that consumers receive reliable, comparable, and verifiable information to enable them to make more sustainable decisions and reduce the risk of greenwashing.
On 8 February 2024, the Belgian Parliament adopted an Act “containing various provisions regarding the Economy” (“Act”), the final text of which was published on 21 March 2024 in the Belgian Official Gazette.
Article 29 of the Act extends the list of information that is to be included in the pre-contractual information document (PID) as required under the Belgian Disclosure Act (“Belgian Disclosure Act”).
The aim of the PID is to function as a “red flag document” that alerts the counterparty to important contractual provisions prior to committing itself by signing a legally binding commercial cooperation agreement. The amendments to the Belgian Disclosure Act further specify the important contractual provisions that need to be included in the PID.
On 17 January 2024, the European Parliament adopted a proposal for a new EU Directive empowering consumers for the green transition introducing new rules to ban misleading advertising and to provide consumers with better product information. To achieve this, a number of marketing practices related to greenwashing will be added to the EU list of prohibited commercial practices. In addition, new rules on informing consumers on a product’s durability will be introduced.
As part of the EU Green Deal launched in 2019, a strong mandate has been issued to ensure consumers receive reliable, comparable and verifiable information to enable them to make more sustainable decisions and to reduce the risk of greenwashing.
The proposed European Union (EU) Green Claims Directive was tabled by the European Commission in March 2023 and aims to address greenwashing and introduces stringent requirements on various aspects in tackling false environmental claims.
On 22 March 2023, the European Commission tabled a proposal for a Directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims.
The proposal aims to harmonize the evaluation and monitoring of voluntary environmental claims – often referred to as “green claims” – towards EU consumers and control the proliferation of public and private environmental labels. Complementing the March 2022 proposal for a Directive on empowering consumers for the green transition as a lex specialis by providing more specific requirements on the substantiation, communication and verification of green claims, it contributes to the fight against “greenwashing”.
Baker McKenzie was invited to serve as the global editor of the Chambers Advertising & Marketing 2022 Practice Guide which features 8 high-profile jurisdictions and provides the latest legal information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, advertising claims and clinical studies, comparative advertising, social/digital media, influencer campaigns, consumer promotions, sports betting/gambling, and cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens.