EmpCo Directive: what manufacturers must now prove and supply

What is the EmpCo Directive?

The EmpCo Directive is Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition. The short name stands for Empowering Consumers; it is also referred to as ECGT. It entered into force on 26 March 2024 and amends two existing EU directives: the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC, UCPD) and the Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU).

These two amendments create the two pillars of the directive. The first governs which environmental claims a company may make towards consumers and how it must substantiate them. The second governs which pre-contractual information consumers must receive before purchase, above all on the legal guarantee, durability, repairability and software updates.

As a directive, EmpCo does not apply directly to companies. Each member state had to transpose it into national law by 27 March 2026 and apply the new rules from 27 September 2026. For you as a manufacturer, the decisive text is therefore not the directive alone, but the national law in every country where you sell.

EmpCo and the Green Claims Directive

The two are often confused. The Green Claims Directive was intended as a second building block that would prescribe detailed methods for substantiating and verifying environmental claims. In June 2025, the European Commission announced its intention to withdraw the proposal. It has not been formally withdrawn, but negotiations between Parliament and Council have stalled (status: October 2026). For you, this means the binding rules on environmental claims currently come only from EmpCo and its national transposition. There is no prescribed verification procedure, but the burden of proof for your claims remains with you.

Application and national transposition

The EU dates are uniform. What differs is how and when each member state has implemented the rules, and that is what applies in practice.

Transposition is uneven

Not every member state met the deadline. According to the CMS implementation tracker (status as of 29 September 2026), Germany, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Hungary, among others, had adopted national laws by the application date, while France, Spain and Poland, among others, had not yet completed transposition. Where national law is late, the directive does not bind companies directly. Courts do, however, interpret existing unfair competition and consumer law in light of the directive, and national laws can follow at short notice. If you sell in several EU markets, plan as if the rules already apply everywhere.

Existing stock: no EU-wide transition period

The directive contains no sell-off period for products already on the market. The Commission has published non-binding guidance, and the CPC Network of national consumer protection authorities agreed a common understanding on existing stock in June 2026: authorities may take a phased, case-by-case approach in justified cases, but the decision lies with national authorities and courts. Some member states have adopted their own rules. Austria limits civil claims for goods placed on the market before 27 September 2026 for three years, a provision contested as incompatible with the fully harmonised directive. Germany has introduced a proportionality test for existing stock until September 2028 (see below). Online communication, websites and advertising materials are generally not covered by such rules.

Enforcement and penalties

Enforcement differs by country. In some member states, consumer authorities are the main enforcers; in others, such as Germany, competitors and associations enforce the rules through warning letters and injunctions. For widespread infringements pursued in coordinated actions under the EU consumer protection cooperation regulation (CPC), member states must provide for maximum fines of at least 4 % of annual turnover in the member states concerned; how this is applied depends on national law. Environmental claims and guarantee statements are visible and easy to check, and a claim on packaging usually appears on thousands of products.

Example: how Germany transposed EmpCo

Germany shows how the two pillars end up in two different legal areas. If you only look at unfair competition law, you miss half of the obligations.

Section 15b UWG: proportionality test for existing stock

The German parliament considered a genuine sell-off period incompatible with EU law. Instead, it adopted Section 15b UWG on 24 September 2026, three days before the application date. For goods placed on the market before 27 September 2026, injunctions for certain EmpCo infringements can only be enforced in good faith and in line with the principle of proportionality. This covers, among other things, misleading statements on environmental or social characteristics and on durability, repairability or recyclability, generic environmental claims, offsetting claims and non-compliant sustainability labels. The balancing test considers the severity of the infringement, the company's efforts to remedy it, the costs and the environmental impact of remedying it. Section 15b UWG was enacted with the Act of 22 October 2026 (Federal Law Gazette 2026 I No. 322), promulgated on 27 October 2026, and applies retroactively from 27 September 2026. It lapses on 27 September 2028, so it covers the period up to and including 26 September 2028.

It is not a safe harbour. It only covers goods placed on the market before the cut-off date. Websites, social media, online advertising and printed advertising materials are not covered, and of the new blacklisted practices on durability, repair and updates, Section 15b names only one. Whether the rule stands up to EU law remains open.

Enforcement in Germany

EmpCo is enforced in Germany mainly through private law. Competitors, trade associations and consumer associations can send warning letters (Abmahnungen), demand cease-and-desist declarations and apply for preliminary injunctions. Fines under Section 19 UWG apply only to widespread infringements pursued in coordinated EU actions: up to 4 % of EU annual turnover for companies with more than EUR 1.25 million turnover, otherwise up to EUR 50,000.

The two pillars of the EmpCo Directive

The two pillars have different legal bases, addressees and risks. But they converge in the same place: the data on a specific product.

Mixing up the pillars leads to wrong decisions. The first is a risk for marketing and legal: any claim that goes too far can be challenged. The second is a delivery task for product management, service and sales: retailers need reliable data per model, otherwise they cannot meet their obligations. This guide focuses on the second pillar, because most overviews give it too little attention.

Environmental claims and labels: what is no longer allowed and what you must prove

EmpCo tightens the rules on environmental claims in two ways. Some practices are added to the blacklist in Annex I of the UCPD and are therefore prohibited without a case-by-case assessment. Others are considered misleading if certain conditions are not met. The following overview shows the cases most relevant to manufacturers.

What changes in practice

The real shift is not the individual prohibition but the logic of proof. Until now, an environmental claim was examined in a dispute. Now the evidence must be in place before the claim is published, and it must match exactly what the claim promises. A certificate for a material does not cover a claim about a whole product. A test report from 2023 does not cover a claim for the 2027 collection.

This is a question of data management. In projects we regularly see certificates held in procurement, test reports in quality assurance and claim approvals by email in marketing. As long as these three are not assigned to a product, a scope and a validity period, you cannot prove in a dispute why a claim was permissible.

Information before purchase: durability, repairability, updates

The second pillar comes from the Consumer Rights Directive. Its purpose is stated in recital 25 of EmpCo: consumers should receive more precise information on the durability and repairability of goods of all kinds before purchase. The obligation applies to the trader who sells to consumers, usually the retailer. It applies online and in-store: Article 6 of the Consumer Rights Directive covers distance and off-premises contracts, Article 5 covers sales in shops.

Note the recurring condition "where the manufacturer makes the information available". It sounds like an obligation with a loophole. How it works economically is shown in the next section.

For electronics manufacturers, the second pillar is especially dense, because software updates, repairability scores and spare parts come together. More on this on our page on the Digital Product Passport for electrical and electronics.

Why the obligation sits with the retailer and the lever with the manufacturer

Recital 36 of the directive describes the division of labour precisely. The retailer should pass on to the consumer the information the manufacturer has provided, or that the manufacturer intended to address directly to consumers on the product, the packaging or the label. The retailer is not required to actively search for it on manufacturer websites. The recital also notes that it is in the manufacturer's interest to provide this information proactively in order to gain an economic advantage.

This does not create a general legal delivery obligation for manufacturers. But it does create a dynamic you should not ignore:

• Retailers will ask. Retailers need to be able to show that they passed on the information they received. They will therefore demand structured data per item, as a listing condition or as part of their supplier requirements.
• Missing information becomes visible. If a competitor in the same shop displays a five-year guarantee of durability with the label and your product only shows the standard notice, the consumer decides on that basis.
• Every piece of information you supply is your statement. The update period or spare parts availability you provide must be accurate. False information on durability or repairability falls under the new blacklisted obsolescence practices.
• One PDF per season is not enough. Information changes with the model, the guarantee or the spare parts policy. The retailer needs the current version, and you need to be able to trace who received which version when.

Who in the company is affected by EmpCo

Every company that markets products to consumers in the EU is affected, directly or through retail. Pure B2B business is essentially outside EmpCo, because the directive protects consumers. As soon as a product also reaches the consumer channel, however, it applies to the communication and information on that product. The company's registered office is irrelevant: what matters is selling to consumers in the EU.

Within the company, the task is spread across several functions. None of them can solve it alone.

If you are deciding where EmpCo belongs organisationally: responsibility for claims usually lies with marketing and legal, responsibility for the data does not. Without a shared data foundation, legal reviews claims whose evidence it cannot see, and sales supplies information whose status nobody knows.

What EmpCo means for your industry

The rules apply across industries, but the pressure points differ considerably. The impact is particularly strong in four industries.

Textiles and fashion

In fashion, the risk lies mainly in pillar one. Claims such as "sustainable collection", "consciously produced" or "climate-neutral shipping" are widespread, as are brands' own sustainability labels. Many of them only concern one aspect, such as the share of recycled fibres, and need to be made more precise. Labels such as GOTS are based on certification schemes; brands' own labels usually are not. Because ranges change every season, the link between evidence and item has to be correct again with every collection. The ESPR act for textiles is in preparation and will later carry much of this information into the Digital Product Passport. More on this on the page on the Digital Product Passport for textiles and fashion.

Electrical and electronics

Here, pillar two applies in full. Update periods, repairability scores for smartphones and tablets, spare parts and repair manuals all come together. In addition, the new obsolescence prohibitions apply particularly often: undisclosed performance losses caused by updates, updates presented as necessary when they only extend functionality, or false statements on the usability of consumables from other suppliers. Update periods are also a commitment you have to keep for years.

Furniture

Furniture manufacturers often give long guarantees, for example on frames or mechanisms. The harmonised label, however, only applies if the guarantee covers the entire good at no extra cost for more than two years. If it only covers parts, there is no label, but the information must still be accurate and clear. Spare parts such as covers, cushions or fittings are a strong argument before purchase if availability and ordering are reliably documented. For wood and materials, claims usually rely on certificates such as FSC or PEFC, whose scope must match the claim exactly. More on this on the page on the Digital Product Passport for furniture.

Batteries and products with batteries

For batteries, EmpCo adds to an already dense set of rules. Claims on lifetime, charging cycles or carbon footprint must match the data already recorded under the Battery Regulation. From 18 February 2027, the battery passport applies, for example to e-bike batteries as batteries for light means of transport. Structure the data cleanly once and you serve consumer information, environmental claims and the battery passport from one source.

EmpCo as a product data task: evidence file and data flow

Translated into data structures, EmpCo creates two objects that depend on a stable product identity.

The digital evidence file for claims

Every environmental claim needs a record that answers what it is based on and what it applies to. The evidence file links the claim to the product, model or variant, the scope, the evidence document and its source, the validity period, the approval with date and owner, and the channels where the claim is used. For labels, a register is added that records the certification scheme, criteria, certificate holder and monitoring. For future claims, a status history with targets, interim results and verification reports is needed.

The real benefit shows when something changes. If a certificate expires, you see immediately which claims on which products in which channels are affected. Without this link, a search through packaging data, shop texts and retailer catalogues begins at that point.

The information package for retail

For pre-contractual information, every model needs a package that retailers can take over directly: guarantee of durability with duration and scope, update period, repairability score or spare parts and repair information, each with its validity. This includes a record of which version went to which recipient when. Exactly this documentation protects retailers and manufacturers if information is disputed later.

In this model, a QR code on the product is only an access point, not evidence. What counts is the data structure behind it.

EmpCo, Digital Product Passport and ESPR: one data foundation, several obligations

To be clear from the outset: EmpCo does not require a Digital Product Passport. Anyone who claims it does oversimplifies the law. The connection lies at the data level. Much of the information EmpCo requires before purchase also belongs to the content of future product passports: durability, repairability, spare parts, evidence on materials and environmental impact.

The Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR) determines through product-specific acts which products need a Digital Product Passport and what it contains. Individual acts may also require information to be accessible before purchase, for example in the online shop. That is a separate ESPR context, not an EmpCo obligation. For electric vehicle batteries, batteries for light means of transport and industrial batteries above 2 kWh, the battery passport applies from 18 February 2027 under the Battery Regulation. In addition, the Right to Repair Directive (EU) 2024/1799 brings further repair information to the fore.

The practical consequence: if you solve EmpCo as an isolated project in spreadsheets and approval emails, you will build the same structure again for the Digital Product Passport in one to three years. If you set it up as a product data foundation, a large part of the DPP groundwork is already done.

Implementing EmpCo: the 5-step roadmap for manufacturers

The order is deliberate. First, the acute risk is reduced; then the data foundation is built that carries you over time.

Steps 1 and 2 are short-term and project-like. Steps 3 to 5 are ongoing operations. If you set them up on a product data foundation for your entire portfolio from the start, you can reuse them for the Digital Product Passport later. If you want to know where your company stands, the DPP readiness check is a good starting point.

Organising EmpCo data with Narravero

Narravero is a product data infrastructure that companies use for the Digital Product Passport, the Ecodesign Regulation and related product legislation. More than 200 corporate customers in 12 industries work with the platform. It handles 300 million accesses on the Narravero platform per month, hosted in the EU and GDPR-compliant.

For EmpCo, this means: on this foundation, product data, claims, certificates, test reports and guarantee, repair and update information can be assigned to a specific product, model or variant. How far this goes in your case, for example for claim approval processes, versioning or the handover to retailers, online shops and service partners, we work out together with you based on your system landscape and requirements.

Strategically, the same data foundation can later also carry the Digital Product Passport. That is an architecture decision, not a requirement of EmpCo. Thomas Rödding, founder and CEO of Narravero, is personally involved as Co-Chair of CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 and as Vice Chairman at DIN, the bodies that help shape the technical framework for the Digital Product Passport in Europe. Through this involvement, he brings a precise understanding of how product data models are conceived from a regulatory perspective.

Discuss your EmpCo data structure →

Frequently asked questions about the EmpCo Directive

Next steps

Three options, depending on where you stand.