Our positioning on the European Commission's draft guidelines on the EU Green Claims Directive

VAUDE welcomes the European Union (EU) Commission's goal of using the EU Green Claims Directive to combat greenwashing and misleading environment-related advertising claims, thereby improving the overall credibility and transparency of environment-related claims.

As a company committed to sustainability, environmental protection and fair working conditions, we support this initiative. We believe that consumers have the right to receive sound and reliable information about the environmental impact of the products they buy.

We are fundamentally committed to ambitious, fast-acting and binding standards for greater sustainability at EU level for as many companies as possible. Regulation is therefore desirable, particularly in the area of environment-related advertising claims. We support the requirement in the draft EU Green Claims Directive that environmental claims must in future be based on valid and verifiable information.

The EU Green Claims Directive will make a decisive contribution to ensuring that environment-related advertising claims become more uniform and trustworthy and that consumers can make more conscious purchasing decisions as a result.

Overall, we believe that the EU Green Claims Directive can make an important contribution to the sustainable transformation of the economy and drive positive change in the industry by encouraging companies to improve their sustainability efforts and to compete more fairly in the market.

However, the current proposal of the EU Commission does not include sustainability claims that refer to the social impacts of corporate actions. However, they would be necessary for consumers in order to enable comprehensive transparency about the sustainability of a product or service. Therefore, sustainability claims that include social aspects should also be considered in the future.