EmpCo Directive
On 27 September 2026 the amended German UWG takes effect. UWG is the German Act Against Unfair Competition, and these changes transpose Directive (EU) 2024/825, called the EmpCo Directive in practice. Its full name is Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition. The directive applies EU-wide, but each member state transposes it into its own national law, so the details differ. We work to German law. Six new per-se prohibitions enter the Annex to Section 3(3) UWG: numbers 2a, 4a, 4b, 4c, 10a and 23d. Four of them concern environmental claims. Sharpness Solutions GmbH in Oldenburg, Germany, offers a pre-audit: an automated scan of the shop pages, a full technical analysis of the product data export, and manual review of selected hits. This is technical preparation and priority setting, not legal advice. Phone +49 441 21 21 63 0, Mon-Fri 9:00-16:00 CET. Page status: 17 August 2026.
People who search for the EmpCo Directive have heard that something is changing and do not know what it means for their own catalogue. We describe four starting points here, because each one begins at a different technical place. They share one thing: the problem does not sit in the legal notice, it sits in the product data — in places nobody sees in the shop.
That is correct. The Third Act Amending the UWG has been in the Federal Law Gazette (BGBl.) since 19 February 2026. It takes effect only on 27 September 2026. Publication and entry into force are two different dates, and one single provision has applied since 19 June 2026. If you conclude from this that you are behind, you are wrong. If you hope for a transition period after the cut-off date, you are also wrong. There is none.
Operators check the description texts and think the job is done. Environmental claims also sit in the meta title and meta description, in keywords, in the short summary, in properties, technical data and FAQ fields. They sit in variants, which stay unchanged when only the parent product is corrected. And they sit in manufacturer texts that entered the source system through an import. If you read only the visible page, you see a fraction.
A self-designed sustainability promise as a graphic — a leaf, a circle, a line of text — is quickly added and then stops being noticed. From the cut-off date, displaying a sustainability label is prohibited per se if it is neither based on a certification scheme nor established by public authorities. The term is broad and also covers voluntary private trust marks and quality marks. Mandatory statutory markings are excluded. A self-awarded house label is not.
In its judgment of 27 June 2024, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) held that an ambiguous environmental term such as carbon neutral must as a rule be explained in the advertisement itself. A link or QR code is not enough. From 27 September 2026 that no longer matters. A claim based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions, stating that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive effect on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, is prohibited per se — even if the offsetting is disclosed and explained.
The Third Act Amending the German Act Against Unfair Competition was signed on 12 February 2026 and issued on 19 February 2026 in the Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt, BGBl.) 2026 Part I No. 43. Published is not the same as in force. Article 2 of the act sets 27 September 2026 as the date of entry into force. Until then, the previous rules apply to environmental advertising. One exception has been in force since 19 June 2026: Section 5(6) UWG, which concerns distance marketing of financial services and comes from the transposition of a different directive. Anyone who reads that the new UWG has applied since February reads something wrong. For planning, the difference matters in both directions. You are not behind today, but there is no grace period after the cut-off date either. Entry into force and start of application fall on the same day.
The European background is two deadlines in Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2024/825 of 28 February 2024. By 27 March 2026 the member states had to adopt and publish the necessary measures. They must apply those measures from 27 September 2026. The directive amends Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU and aims at better protection against unfair practices and better information for consumers. It carries no official short name. EmpCo is an abbreviation established in legal literature and advisory practice, taken from the English title about empowering consumers for the green transition. One point matters for readers outside Germany: the directive applies EU-wide, but each member state has its own transposition act, and the wording, the numbering and the enforcement route differ from country to country. For a shop that sells to German consumers, the amended UWG is what counts, and this page works to German law.
The Green Claims Directive is sometimes confused with the EmpCo Directive or expected as its sequel. It has not been adopted to this day. Proposal COM(2023) 166 final, procedure 2023/0085(COD), is still listed as an ongoing procedure in the EU primary sources. The European Parliament adopted its first-reading position on 12 March 2024. The first-reading position of the Council is still outstanding. Two things follow. First, there are currently no separate EU-level obligations for prior substantiation and verification of environmental claims. What counts is the UWG as amended through EmpCo. Second, this standstill relieves nobody. It changes nothing in the UWG timetable. Anyone who waits for movement in Brussels before touching the catalogue is waiting for the wrong date.
New in the Annex to Section 3(3) UWG is number 4a: making a generic environmental claim where the trader cannot demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance behind it. This is a per-se prohibition. Nobody examines whether the claim misleads in the individual case. The definition is what decides: a claim is generic if the specification is not stated in a clear and prominent way on the same medium. A footnote or a linked sub-page is therefore not enough. The counter-test is recognised excellent environmental performance, and the bar is high: the EU Ecolabel under Regulation (EC) No 66/2010, officially recognised Type I ecolabels under DIN EN ISO 14024, or top environmental performance under other Union law. A self-set standard does not qualify. In practice this means that wording such as environmentally friendly, green, eco or sustainable belongs on the test bench from the cut-off date, if no specification stands next to it on the same medium. Whether a single instance really is a generic environmental claim depends on the context, and finally on a lawyer.
Number 4b prohibits an untrue statement about the scope of an environmental claim: a claim about the whole product or the whole business when it in fact relates only to one aspect or one activity. Typical test patterns are the sustainable online shop where only the shipping is offset, and the environmentally friendly product where only the packaging is recycled. Whether a specific claim falls under this is a legal assessment in the individual case. Number 4c covers offset-based claims: claims based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions, stating that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive effect on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. In its judgment of 27 June 2024, case I ZR 98/23, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) held that an ambiguous environmental term such as carbon neutral must as a rule be explained in the advertisement itself, and that a link or QR code is not enough. It did not have to decide whether such an explanation is sufficient for offset-based claims. From 27 September 2026 that no longer matters. Number 4c applies regardless of the explanation.
Number 2a covers labels: displaying a sustainability label that is neither based on a certification scheme nor established by public authorities. The act defines a certification scheme as a third-party verification system with publicly available conditions, non-discriminatory access, defined procedures for infringements and objective monitoring by a third party. A trader who awards a label to itself does not meet this. On top of that comes the breadth of the term environmental claim. It covers text, images, graphic elements and symbols, expressly including labels, brand names, company names and product names. A green leaf icon in the grid view can already be an environmental claim. So can a product name containing Eco. This is exactly why reading the description texts is not enough. The check has to reach names, attributes and image elements as well.
Alongside the four environmental prohibitions there are further changes that matter in practice. Under the new Section 5(3) no. 4 UWG, an environmental claim about future environmental performance is misleading if it is not based on clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments set out in a detailed and realistic implementation plan. That plan must name measurable and time-bound targets and the means required, and it must be reviewed regularly by an independent external expert whose findings are made available to consumers. Under the new Section 5(3) no. 3 UWG, it is misleading to advertise benefits that are irrelevant and do not follow from a feature of the product, the service or the business. Here the misleadingness test still applies. New Annex number 10a prohibits presenting statutory product requirements as a special feature of your own offer, again without a misleadingness test. Annex number 23d covers misleading statements on software updates, durability and repairability. Section 5b(3a) UWG adds information duties for services that compare products by environmental or social features.
The pre-audit rests on three sources that correct each other. First, an automated scan of the publicly reachable shop pages. It shows what a reader actually sees, including category texts and landing pages. Second, a full technical analysis of the product data export across all data fields. It shows what sits in the source system, including places where nothing is output at the moment. Third, manual review of selected hits, cross-checked against the manufacturer information. It separates the real test candidates from the accidental hits. Without the third source the result would be a hit list nobody can work with. Without the second, half of the data would stay invisible. The method is built for large catalogues with deep variant structures, and it has been used on a shop with around ten thousand product records. We do not publish client details, not even when they would read well as a reference.
The check goes beyond the visible product texts. It also covers meta description and meta title, keywords, the short summary, properties, technical data and FAQ fields — exactly the places where wording stays untouched for years, because it does not stand out in the layout. Variants matter just as much, across every level. If a claim is corrected only on the parent product, it stays in the variants and reappears with the next export. This is why the analysis runs over the complete data set and not over a sample. There is a practical side effect. You get a reliable overview of which field holds which text, and which import it came from. That is useful even when part of the hits turns out to be harmless in the end.
We sort the risk patterns by priority. At the top are generic environmental claims without a specification on the same medium. Then percentage savings claims without a visible basis for comparison. Then whole-product claims where the effect in fact depends on a single component or on the packaging. Then absolute promises of effect, that is wording such as prevents, guarantees or completely, which leaves no room and is therefore hard to substantiate. Then labels without a demonstrable certification scheme. Then durability and repairability claims. And last, but not to be ignored, the invisible meta and keyword fields that a visual check in the shop systematically misses. This order is a working order, not an assessment of the legal position. It says where a clean-up starts when time is limited. Which class is most strongly represented in your catalogue depends on where your product texts come from.
An automated term hit is not a legal infringement. It is a test candidate, nothing more. Green can describe a colour. Sustainable can refer to something quite different from the environment in a running text. A word fragment can match by pure chance. In the other direction, a scan misses wording that carries an environmental claim without using any of the search terms. Both are the reason why the manual review belongs to the method and is not sold as an extra. In the report we therefore do not write what is prohibited. We write what has to be examined, and why. A hit list that marks every find as an infringement creates work in the wrong place, and trust in the wrong place as well. Next to every hit we state which field it was found in and why it belongs on the list.
The scope covered has limits, and we name them in advance. Pages that are not indexed, dynamically loaded content, text inside images, PDF documents, banners, structured data and pages that are unreachable during the run lie outside the automated scan. The product data export compensates for part of this, because it maps the source system completely. But it only knows what sits in the source system, not what a theme or an extension outputs on top. Anyone who promises complete coverage promises something an automated check cannot deliver. We would rather have you know which part of your site was examined and which part was not, than have you rely on a number that blurs that distinction.
And here our work stops. The pre-audit is not legal advice and not a legal opinion. Sharpness Solutions GmbH is a digital agency, not a law firm. We tell you which wording sits in which fields, which risk pattern it matches, and in which order a clean-up makes sense. Whether a specific claim remains permissible in the individual case is a legal assessment, and that requires a lawyer. For material claims we expressly recommend that review before final approval. The pre-audit serves internal preparation, priority setting and technical clean-up. It does not replace the legal decision. It prepares it, because the law firm no longer has to search and can assess instead. We give no assurance of legal certainty and no assurance against warning letters. That would lie outside what a digital agency can judge.
The correction standard is simpler than it sounds. Blanket terms are replaced by concrete properties. Instead of environmentally friendly, the text states the material share, the way the product works, or a measurable figure. Savings claims are tied to their conditions and to a defined baseline, instead of standing free in the room. Percentages get what makes them verifiable: comparison product, conditions, period, method and source. Absolute wording is rewritten as a possibility or a reduction, because prevents is a promise and reduces under the stated conditions is a description. The wording does not become softer in this process. It becomes more precise. There is a side effect for the sales texts. Concrete statements read in a more factual way, they are also easier to substantiate, and they can be used as attributes in filters and in search, which is not true of adjectives.
The action plan runs in phases. First, unsubstantiated claims are blocked or replaced, starting with the highest risk class. In parallel, requests go out to the manufacturers: claim-specific evidence, test reports and details of the scope, so that it is clear which articles a document actually covers. Then the source system fields are cleaned up systematically, including the meta data and all variants, so that the correction survives the next import. After that an approval matrix is introduced: claim, approved wording, comparison, conditions, source, validity and approval responsibility in one table that somebody maintains. Once the changes are live, a full scan runs again, because a clean-up without a follow-up check stays a declaration of intent. And finally, the review of supplier texts and certificates is built permanently into your product data process, so that the next catalogue import does not bring everything back.
What belongs in the evidence file can be set out as a minimum list. First, the exact approved wording together with the articles and variants concerned — not the topic, the sentence. Second, the specific comparison product or a clearly defined baseline. Third, measurement method, test conditions, configuration, period and geographic reference, as far as they are relevant to the claim. Fourth, the manufacturer document or an independent test report, each with version and date. Fifth, for labels, the scope together with the expiry or review date. Sixth, approval date, responsible unit and the date for the next review. This file is not an end in itself and not a folder for the shelf. It is the difference between a claim you can explain in a few minutes when it matters, and a claim whose origin nobody in the company remembers. And it is the basis on which a law firm can assess instead of research.
Process
The cut-off date is 27 September 2026. We scan the shop pages, analyse the product data export across all fields, and review selected hits by hand. The result is a report with risk patterns and a working order — not legal advice, and no assurance of legal certainty. Call +49 441 21 21 63 0, Mon-Fri 9:00-16:00 CET, or use the form.
You tell us which shop system you run, how many product records are in the catalogue and how the product data gets there: your own editorial team, a supplier import or a PIM. From that we see which fields exist, how deep the variant structure goes and where an analysis should start. We also ask what you have already checked yourself, so that we do not do it a second time. You can reach us Mon-Fri 9:00-16:00 CET, by phone or through the form.
We need a complete product data export across all fields, variants included, and your approval for an automated scan of the publicly reachable shop pages. Both run without any intervention in live operation and without changing your data. For the export, an existing export interface is usually enough. Where none exists, we set one up and you keep it afterwards. During the analysis the data sits on our own servers in Germany.
The export is analysed across all data fields, not as a sample: description, short summary, properties, technical data, FAQ fields, keywords, meta title and meta description. The scan of the shop pages runs in parallel. Every hit is logged with field, article reference, variant assignment and location, so that it is clear later where exactly the correction has to happen, and so that after the clean-up you can check whether the correction really reached every place.
We look at selected hits one by one and compare them with the manufacturer information. This is where the accidental hits drop out: the colour green, the chance word fragment, the sentence that is not about the environment at all. And this is where it becomes clear which claims really need evidence, and which articles an existing document actually covers. The result is not a hit count. It is a list of test candidates sorted by risk pattern.
You receive in writing which wording patterns appear in which fields, which risk class they belong to, which correction standard applies technically, and in which order the work makes sense. This includes the scope that was covered and, expressly, what lay outside it: text in images, PDFs, banners, pages that are not indexed. Anything that needs a final legal assessment is named as such, and we do not assess it ourselves.
On request we carry out the corrections in the source system — fields, meta data, variants — and then run a full scan again, because a clean-up without a follow-up check stays a declaration of intent. We set up the approval matrix and the evidence file with you, and the review of supplier texts and certificates moves permanently into your product data process. The final legal approval of material claims belongs with a law firm, not with us.
From 27 September 2026. The Third Act Amending the German Act Against Unfair Competition was signed on 12 February 2026 and issued on 19 February 2026 in the Federal Law Gazette (BGBl.) 2026 Part I No. 43. Under Article 2 it takes effect only on 27 September 2026. Until then the previous rules apply to environmental advertising. One exception has been in force since 19 June 2026: Section 5(6) UWG, which comes from the transposition of Directive (EU) 2023/2673 on distance marketing of financial services. The act provides no transition period after 27 September 2026.
It means Directive (EU) 2024/825 of 28 February 2024, which amends Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU. It targets greenwashing and premature obsolescence through prohibitions on unfair environmental advertising and through additional information duties. The directive carries no official short name. EmpCo is an abbreviation established in legal literature and advisory practice, taken from the English title about empowering consumers for the green transition. The directive applies EU-wide, but it takes effect through national transposition, and that transposition differs from member state to member state. For a German shop, the national act is what counts directly, that is the amended UWG.
Directive (EU) 2024/825 binds every member state, so comparable rules apply in the Netherlands and in Germany from 27 September 2026. The transposition acts are not identical, though: wording, numbering, enforcement bodies and the sanction route are national. Our pre-audit works to German law and to the amended UWG, because that is the framework we know in detail. The technical part of the work is the same for every catalogue: which wording sits in which field, in which variants, and what evidence exists for it. For the legal assessment under your own national law you need a lawyer admitted in that country.
Not if the claim is based on offsetting. The new number 4c in the Annex to Section 3(3) UWG prohibits per se any claim that is based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions and states that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive effect on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. In its judgment of 27 June 2024, case I ZR 98/23, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) held that an ambiguous environmental term such as carbon neutral must as a rule be explained in the advertisement itself, and that a link or QR code is not enough. Whether a specific wording in your shop falls under number 4c is a legal assessment and belongs with a lawyer.
The act defines it as an environmental claim made in written or spoken form, not appearing on a sustainability label, where the specification is not stated in a clear and prominent way on the same medium. The medium is the decisive point: a footnote or a linked sub-page is not enough. Under the new number 4a, such a claim is prohibited per se if recognised excellent environmental performance cannot be demonstrated. That performance is narrowly defined: EU Ecolabel, officially recognised Type I ecolabels under DIN EN ISO 14024, or top environmental performance under other Union law. A self-set standard does not qualify.
The new number 2a in the Annex to Section 3(3) UWG prohibits per se the display of a sustainability label that is neither based on a certification scheme nor established by public authorities. The term sustainability label is broad and also covers voluntary private trust marks and quality marks. Mandatory statutory markings are excluded. Under the statutory definition, a certification scheme requires among other things third-party verification, publicly available conditions, non-discriminatory access, procedures for dealing with infringements and objective monitoring. A house label that you award to yourself does not meet this.
Yes. The statutory definition of an environmental claim is deliberately broad. It covers any statement or representation in the context of a commercial practice, including representations through text, images, graphic elements or symbols such as labels, brand names, company names or product names. A green leaf icon in the grid view can already be an environmental claim, and so can a product name with an environmental reference inside the word. For the check of a shop this means that the description texts alone are not enough. Names, attributes, image elements and theme components belong in scope, and part of that can only be reached reliably through the product data export.
The amended UWG contains no separate prohibition specifically for quantified environmental claims. Neither the definitions in Section 2 nor Section 5, Section 5b or the new Annex numbers deal with percentages or figures separately. Such claims remain subject to the general rules on misleading practices and to the burden of substantiation on the advertiser. If a quantified claim is at the same time a generic environmental claim, a whole-product claim or an offset-based claim, then numbers 4a, 4b or 4c do apply. In the pre-audit we therefore treat percentage savings claims without a visible basis for comparison as a separate risk class. Not because they are prohibited, but because we can check whether comparison product, conditions, period, method and source are stored in the data at all.
The Green Claims Directive has not been adopted to this day and does not apply. Proposal COM(2023) 166 final, procedure 2023/0085(COD), is still listed as an ongoing procedure in the EU primary sources. The European Parliament adopted its first-reading position on 12 March 2024, and the first-reading position of the Council is still outstanding. It follows that there are currently no separate EU-level obligations for prior substantiation and verification of environmental claims. What counts is the UWG as amended through EmpCo. The standstill changes nothing in the timetable towards 27 September 2026. It moves neither the cut-off date nor the new per-se prohibitions.
No. A term hit is a test candidate, nothing more. Green can describe a colour, a word fragment can match by chance, and a sentence can refer to something quite different from the environment. In the other direction, a scan misses wording that carries an environmental claim without using any of the search terms. That is exactly why the manual review of selected hits belongs to the method and is not an extra service. The report therefore does not state what is prohibited. It states what has to be examined, and why. A list that marks every find as an infringement creates work in the wrong place.
Outside the automated scan lie pages that are not indexed, dynamically loaded content, text inside images, PDF documents, banners, structured data and pages that are unreachable during the run. The product data export compensates for part of this, because it maps the source system completely. But it only knows what sits in the source system, not what a theme or an extension outputs on top. We name the scope covered expressly in the report, including the gaps. An automated check can produce false positives and can miss hits. Anyone who promises complete coverage promises something that is technically not possible.
No. Sharpness Solutions GmbH is a digital agency in Oldenburg, Germany, not a law firm. The pre-audit is neither a legal opinion nor legal advice. It serves internal preparation, priority setting and technical clean-up. We show which wording sits in which fields and variants, which risk pattern it matches, and which correction standard applies technically. The final legal assessment of a specific claim requires a case-by-case review by a lawyer, and we expressly recommend that review before material claims are finally approved. We give no assurance of legal certainty and no assurance against warning letters. That would lie outside what we can judge.
We do not name amounts on this page. The scope matters first. The administrative offence under Section 19(1) UWG relates to widespread infringements within the meaning of Section 5c UWG, not to every breach of the UWG. It can also only be pursued within a coordinated enforcement action under Article 21 of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394. The amending act does not raise the level of the fine framework itself. The provision is restructured, and Section 17(2) of the German Act on Regulatory Offences does not apply to traders. Under Section 8(3) UWG, competitors and the associations, bodies and chambers named there may bring claims. Which framework applies in an individual case, and whether it applies at all, is a legal assessment and belongs with a lawyer.
We name figures once we know what we are talking about. The effort depends on the number of product records, on the number of fields actually filled, on the depth of the variant structure, and on whether a complete product data export already exists or has to be set up first. That is why a first call comes at the beginning, followed by a written offer with a defined scope, rather than a price list on a web page. Ongoing support and response times are governed by a maintenance contract with an SLA, and you get those terms on request. Call us: +49 441 21 21 63 0, Mon-Fri 9:00-16:00 CET.
Enquiry
Describe briefly which shop system you run, how the product data gets there, and what you have already checked. If you want it faster, call us.