One Advertisement, One German Court
In 2025, a court in Frankfurt ruled that Apple could not advertise an Apple Watch as "CO2-neutral." The claim rested on emissions offset through forestry projects in Paraguay that were guaranteed only until 2029, while a reasonable buyer would read a climate promise as lasting closer to 2050, and the judges called that gap misleading. The ban applied to one product, in one country, under Germany's own unfair-competition law.
A separate US lawsuit over a similar Apple claim was dismissed in February 2026 for lack of evidence, so the same style of marketing survived in one market and lost in another. Starting today, that patchwork ends. The European Union's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive enters into application across all 27 member states, and this time no single court has to decide the case first.
What the Directive Bans Outright
The directive bans any claim that a product has a "neutral, reduced or positive impact" on the environment because its emissions were offset elsewhere, regardless of whether the offset project itself is legitimate. It also bans generic claims such as "eco-friendly," "green" or "sustainable" unless they are specified and backed by evidence, and it bans a company from inventing its own sustainability logo unless that logo comes from a certification scheme with independent, third-party verification.
The table below lines up the same style of claim against three different rulings, in the order each one actually happened.
| Where | The claim | What happened | On what basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany, 2025 | "CO2-neutral" Apple Watch, Paraguay forestry offsets | Advertising banned | National unfair-competition law, one case |
| United States, Feb 2026 | Same style of "carbon neutral" claim | Lawsuit dismissed | Plaintiff did not prove it false |
| European Union, today | Any offset-based "neutral" claim, any company | Banned outright, no case needed | ECGT Directive, all 27 states at once |
Twenty Warnings Before the Deadline
The European Commission opened infringement proceedings against 20 of its own 27 member states on May 28, 2026, for missing the March deadline to write this directive into national law, and as of late August some of those states had still not finished. That means the ban itself lands everywhere today, uniformly, while the national machinery meant to catch violations does not necessarily exist yet in every country.
For a company operating across the EU, that gap is not an excuse. The Consumer Protection Cooperation Network lets a national authority in one member state act on a complaint even when its own transposition is incomplete, and consumers or competitors can file that complaint without waiting for a government to catch up.
What to Check This Week, Not This Quarter
Any company selling into the EU should treat every package, advertisement and product page carrying a green claim as a legal document as of today, not as marketing copy to revisit later. That means pulling every use of "carbon neutral," "climate neutral," "eco-friendly" or a self-made leaf logo, and asking whether it survives the same scrutiny the Frankfurt court applied to Apple.
A claim that rests on buying offsets somewhere else no longer survives at all, under any wording. A generic claim needs a specific, provable substitute, such as naming the exact percentage of recycled material in a device rather than calling it sustainable. A self-made label needs a real third-party certification behind it, with transparent membership rules and independent monitoring, or it needs to come off the box.
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