Is Your Sustainability Label Still Legal After 27 September? The Three-Category Test
There is one line in Directive (EU) 2024/825 that is shorter than any other and will cost more websites than any other. From 27 September 2026, Annex I of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive lists, as a practice that is unfair in all circumstances: displaying a sustainability label which is not based on a certification scheme or not established by public authorities. No balancing test, no question of whether a consumer was actually misled. If the badge is on the page and nothing independent stands behind it, the practice is prohibited.
We have scanned 971 EU websites since June, text and images, against the directive. 320 of them, one in three, carry at least one label or badge that fails this line. That is 799 individual findings. Roughly nine in ten of those are badges the company designed itself. Two of the 799 have any evidence attached to them on the page.
Most of EmpCo is about substantiation: a vague claim can be rescued by adding the fact behind it. A self-declared label cannot. There is no sentence you can add underneath a badge you designed yourself that turns it into a certification scheme. The only fixes are to certify it through an independent third party, or to take it down.
The three categories
The directive draws exactly one line, and it creates three kinds of label. Which side of the line yours falls on is a question of who stands behind it, not of how it looks or how honest the claim is.
Category 1: established by a public authority
The EU Ecolabel, the EU energy label, national schemes such as Germany's Blauer Engel or the Nordic Swan, and product-specific public labels. These are explicitly permitted. The only thing that can go wrong is displaying one you do not hold, or displaying it on products it was not awarded to.
Category 2: based on a certification scheme
This is where most legitimate private labels live, and where most confusion is. The directive defines a certification scheme in Article 2 with four conditions. It must be open to any trader willing to meet its requirements under transparent, fair and non-discriminatory terms. Its requirements must be set by the scheme owner in consultation with relevant experts and stakeholders. It must include monitoring of compliance. And compliance must be verified by an independent third party with recognised competence, not by the company itself.
Textile, forestry and organic certifications with published standards and accredited auditors meet this. So do independent environmental scoring schemes that publish their methodology, verify data through a third party and keep checking after the score is awarded. A private label is not suspect because it is private. It is suspect when one of the four conditions is missing.
Category 3: self-declared
A badge, seal, stamp or icon that the company or its agency created, with no third party behind it. "Eco choice". "Responsible range". A green leaf next to "sustainably packaged". A letter grade the brand awards its own products. An internal quality protocol presented with a shield icon and the word "label". After 27 September, every one of these is a prohibited practice as displayed, regardless of whether the underlying claim is true.
Can any competitor apply for it on published terms? Were its criteria set with outside experts, not just by the owner? Is compliance checked after the award, not only before? Does someone independent verify it, with a certificate you could show? Four yeses and it is a certification scheme. One no and it is self-declared, whatever it is called.
What 799 label findings look like
The findings come from two places: the text of a page, and its screenshot. The screenshot matters more here than anywhere else in the directive, because a label is usually an image. About seven in ten of the 799 were found in an image and nowhere in the copy, which is why a text-only review of your website will miss most of them.
- Self-designed badges, about 90% of findings. A green heart with "100% recycling" inside it on a packshot. A circular seal reading "eco-logically effective". A leaf-and-figures icon under "long service life". Designed in-house, sitting on product images, often since a rebrand years ago.
- Generic leaf and globe icons, about a third. Not a label in the company's mind, but placed beside an environmental claim they function as one: a visual assertion of endorsement with nobody endorsing.
- In-house scores and letter grades, about one in eight. An A-to-E rating or a number out of 100 that the brand computed for its own products. A score is a label. If the methodology is not public and nobody independent verified the inputs, it is category 3.
- Real schemes with no proof on the page, about one in fifteen. A legitimate certification displayed with no certificate number, no licence holder name and no link to the scheme's registry. These are rated yellow, not red: the label may be fine, the page does not show it.
That last group is the one that surprises people. A recognised certification is still a finding if the page gives a customer no way to check it. The directive expects the evidence where the claim is, and for a label that means the certificate number or a link to the entry in the scheme's public register, on the same page as the badge.
The special case of scores
Environmental scores have multiplied across Europe in the last three years: on food, textiles, cosmetics, cleaning products, digital services. France alone has counted more than a hundred. Under the directive a score is a sustainability label like any other, and the question is the same: who stands behind the grade?
A score a brand computes for its own range, with its own weighting, is self-declared. A score operated by an independent body with a published method, third-party verification of the data and ongoing surveillance is a certification scheme. Between the two sits a grey zone of schemes that are independent but not yet fully verified, and that is where many of the French and German private scores are currently working to get across the line before the deadline. If you display one, ask the scheme operator which of the four conditions they meet today, in writing.
What to do with the badge on your product images this week
- Inventory the images, not the copy. Search your media library and your product templates for badges, seals, leaf icons and score graphics. Most of what we find is on images, and most of it was added by an agency years ago.
- Sort every badge into a category. Public authority, certification scheme, or self-declared. Use the four questions. Be honest about "our internal quality label": if nobody outside the company verifies it, it is category 3.
- Take category 3 down, or rename it. An internal protocol can stay on the page as a description of what you do, in words, without a seal and without the word "label" or "certified". The practice that is banned is the label, not the information.
- Put the proof next to category 2. Certificate number, licence holder, link to the registry entry. On the product page, not on a sustainability page three clicks away.
- Keep a dated record. Which badges you found, which category you assigned, what you removed and when. After 27 September the question a regulator or a competitor asks is not whether your site is perfect, it is whether you can show what you checked.
All counts come from EcoClaim's own scan corpus: 971 completed scans of EU websites between 1 June and 11 September 2026, text and image analysis, rules version 0.6.0. It is a self-selected sample of sites run through our checker, not a random sample of EU commerce, so read the proportions as direction rather than as market statistics. The live version is on our statistics page.
Find every badge on your pages, including the ones in images
Paste a URL and every label, seal, icon and score on your pages is checked against the directive, in text and in screenshots, with its category and what to do about it. The first scan is free and needs no account.
Run a free checkFAQ
Our label is honest and the claim behind it is true. Does that matter?
Not for this rule. Annex I practices are prohibited in all circumstances, without a test of whether anyone was misled. A self-declared sustainability label is on that list. The truth of the claim can be presented in words on the page; it cannot be presented as a badge that implies independent endorsement.
Is a private label automatically banned?
No. The directive bans labels that are not based on a certification scheme. A private scheme that is open to any applicant on published terms, sets its criteria with outside experts, monitors compliance and has an independent third party verify it is a certification scheme, and labels based on it are permitted. Most established textile, forestry and organic certifications qualify. What is banned is the badge with nobody independent behind it.
We display a real certification but have no certificate number on the page. Is that a problem?
It is a yellow finding rather than a red one: the label may be perfectly valid, but the page gives a customer no way to verify it. Add the certificate or licence number and, where the scheme has one, a link to your entry in its public register, on the same page as the badge.
Does a green leaf icon count as a label?
On its own, no. Next to an environmental claim, in practice yes: it functions as a visual endorsement, and in our corpus about a third of label findings are generic leaf or globe icons placed beside a claim. Remove the icon or replace it with the specific, checkable fact.
What about an environmental score we calculate for our own products?
A score is a label. If your company computes it with its own weighting and nobody independent verifies it, it is self-declared and falls under the prohibition. If it is operated by an independent scheme with a published methodology, third-party verification and ongoing monitoring, it is a certification scheme. Ask the operator which conditions they meet, in writing, before the deadline.
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