Empowering Consumers to Make Informed Purchasing Decisions

With growing environmental awareness, demand for products that contribute to a more sustainable future is also increasing. However, the multitude of different — often difficult to verify — labels poses a major challenge for consumers and makes it difficult to make informed purchasing decisions.

The European Commission’s proposed Empowering Consumer Directive (EmpCo) (EU) 2024/825 addresses this problem. From 27 September 2026, the regulations will apply, providing consumers with clearer information about the sustainability of products. For example, company-owned sustainability labels will no longer be allowed. Instead, sustainability labels must either have been established by public authorities or be based on an independent certification system. The EmpCo Directive provides clear guidelines for such certification systems. Among other things, the EmpCo Directive requires that certification systems to be transparent and accessible to all potential users and that they should be developed in collaboration with experts and relevant stakeholders. In addition, there must be clear rules on how to deal with non-conformities of the system requirements, for example by withdrawing certification. Compliance with the requirements of the certification system must be verified by an independent and qualified body in order to rule out conflicts of interest.

For HORTICERT, these requirements confirm the values that have characterized the certification system from the outset: HORTICERT is an independent system and was developed in a multi-stakeholder dialogue that brings together stakeholders from the industry, retail representatives, NGOs, research, academia, and public authorities The system documents that define the fundamentals of the system are available to the public. If a system user violates the requirements of the system, the certificate is suspended or withdrawn. Compliance with the requirements is verified in independent audits conducted by accredited certification bodies. This means that HORTICERT certified companies are already well prepared for the upcoming changes brought about by EmpCo.

As a transparent and credible certification system, HORTICERT enables companies to demonstrate their environmental responsibility and strengthen consumer confidence.

Further information on the implementation of EmpCo requirements at HORTICERT can be found here.

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