Grönmålning i marknadsföring - En studie av det historiska, det nuvarande och det framtida rättsläget kring miljöpåståenden i marknadsföring

Sammanfattning

The growing environmental awareness from consumers has led to an increased commercial value for environmental claims. In the beginning of 2022, the European Commission proposed a new directive with the aim to strengthen the regulation of environmental claims. The new proposed directive is amending the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive that is implemented in Swedish law through the marketing law. The current regulation does not contain any special regulation regarding environmental claims. Since the first law on marketing was introduced in 1970, the different laws on marketing have been used to forbid forms of greenwashing. This essay aims to examine the historical regulation of environmental claims, the current regulation of environmental claims and how the new proposed directive will impact the Swedish national regulation in the future. The result of this essay shows that most environmental claims are unfair because they are misleading. The challenges with environmental claims lays in the difficulty of proving their accuracy. In 1982 the Swedish court declared that it should be a high level of reliability for an environmental claim not to be misleading. Over the years it has been clarified what requirements that needs to be fulfilled for an environmental claim not to be misleading. The claim must be used with its relative meaning, it must be clear what environmental effects the claim is referring to and the claim must give a fair overall picture. The clarification that is done must be placed right next to the claim. In conclusion, the Commissions new proposed directive will have an impact on the Swedish regulation regarding the use of generic environmental claims. Mainly regarding the placing of the clarification and the underlying evidence. The proposal will also have an impact on the use of sustainability labels since there will be higher requirements on what labels that may be used.