In the European Green Deal, the Commission committed to tackle false environmental claims and reduce the risk of ‘green washing’. The answer to this commitment lies within a set of intertwined regulatory texts, which are being discussed separately in Brussels.
The Directive on Green Claims sets the rules for companies to back up their claims, based on independent third-party certification and verification, as well as a registry of ‘ecolabels’ that can be trusted. The Directive Empowering consumers for the Green Transition adds provisions to improve the credibility and impartiality of those mandatory certification schemes. When it comes to climate-related claims (i.e “carbon neutral”, “100% CO2 compensated”, or “net-zero by a given year”), the Carbon Removal Regulation, once adopted, will set the methodological requirements to substantiate them; yet both the Directive on Green Claims and the one on Empowering Consumers for the Green transition set overlapping provisions on climate-related claims based on offsets. Finally, a legislative initiative on Sustainable Food Systems expected in late 2023 will lay down definitions and rules for the sustainability labelling of food products.
OPTA Europe strongly supports the Commission’s efforts to fight greenwashing and to empower consumers to choose truly sustainable products. But this tangle of rules creates legal uncertainty and poses major concerns for organic companies.
A level playing field for small-scale operators
The reduction of the environmental footprint being in the DNA of organics, a big share of companies along the supply chain, mostly SMEs, have invested in sustainability programmes and use environmental claims and labels to communicate these additional efforts to consumers.
It will be necessary to clarify and harmonise the provisions in the horizontal ‘green’ directives
To the extent that green claims and labels will remain allowed under strict conditions, a fair access for small operators must be guaranteed. Unless clear guidelines are issued and minimal red-tape and cost procedures are implemented, organic companies will not be able to communicate and will see reduced their capacity to participate in the sustainable food market in favour of players with higher resources for regulatory screening and administrative activities.
Consistency with the Farm to Fork Strategy
The European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy have laid out a clear vision on EU food and farming based on lower GHG emissions, reduced use of chemical pesticides, improved animal husbandry and increase of organic food and farming.
For OPTA Europe, it will be necessary to clarify and harmonise the provisions in the horizontal ‘green’ directives, which apply across all industries, to ensure that they do not create discrepancies or weaken, but rather reinforce, the policy objectives in the Farm to Fork Strategy.
For example, by ensuring that harmonized methodologies to assess the footprint of food include the impact categories that have been identified as relevant in the Farm to Fork Strategy, namely the use of chemical and hazardous pesticides, fertilizers and antimicrobials on farmed animals. In the same logic, it would be paradoxical to allow green claims & labels on food treated with those substances.
OPTA Europe advocates for a framework that truly allows the ambitious transformational agenda in the Farm to Fork Strategy
What we stand for:
OPTA Europe advocates for a framework that truly allows the ambitious transformational agenda in the Farm to Fork Strategy, with organics as one of its cornerstones:
- A simplified and streamlined regulatory framework to measure and communicate the environmental sustainability of food products;
- Methodological choices that allow to model and assess the environmental performance of agri-foodstuff against the objectives of the Farm to Fork Strategy;
- SME-friendly rules with minimal administrative and financial burden;
- Favourable consideration of organic food in the context of these legislative initiatives because of their demonstrated multiple environmental benefits.
Author: Aurora Abad, OPTA Association Manager
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