Green Claim Lint - EU EmpCo 2026

On 27 September 2026 the national measures transposing Directive (EU) 2024/825 - the "empowering consumers for the green transition" directive, EmpCo - start to apply across the EU. It amends the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC and the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU, and it moves a set of familiar marketing phrases onto the Annex I blacklist, where no case-by-case assessment and no amount of evidence can save them.

Most product copy written in 2025 and 2026 was drafted, or at least polished, by a generative model. Models are fluent in exactly the vocabulary the directive now lists: "eco-friendly", "climate neutral", "our own sustainability score", "we will be net zero by 2030". This extension reads the files you already have and tells you which of those phrases are now a problem, which clause makes them one, and what to write instead.

What it checks

Green Claim Lint scans .html, .htm, .md and .mdx and applies 13 rules. Six report as errors and seven as warnings:

Errors - generic-env-claim (UCPD Annex I, point 4(a)), offset-neutrality (Annex I, point 4(c)), uncertified-label (Annex I, point 2(a)), future-pledge (Art. 6(2)(d)), whole-vs-part (Annex I, point 4(b)), durability-unproven (Annex I, point 23(d)).

Warnings - legal-as-feature (Annex I, point 10), repairability-claim (Annex I, point 23(e)), premature-replacement (Annex I, point 23(f)), update-necessity (Annex I, points 23(g) and 23(h)), irrelevant-benefit (Art. 6(2)(c)), unquantified-recycled (Art. 6(1)(b)), vague-maximum (Art. 6(1)(b)).

Each finding carries the exact phrase, the line number, the clause, and a rewrite that names the measured aspect instead of the generic claim.

The one rule worth reading twice is offset-neutrality. A claim that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive environmental impact on the basis of emissions offsetting is listed in Annex I. It is not a claim that needs better substantiation; it is a claim you delete.

What the sample pages score

The extension ships two fixtures. _fixtures/dirty.html, a plausible AI-written jacket listing, returns 18 findings - 11 errors and 7 warnings. _fixtures/clean.html, the same page rewritten with certificate IDs, test standards and stated percentages, returns 0.

Running it

• Green Claim Lint: Check this file - the page you have open.
• Green Claim Lint: Scan workspace - every matching file, plus a dated CSV and Markdown evidence report.

False positives

Rules are deliberately literal. A line naming a real scheme (EU Ecolabel, Nordic Swan, Blue Angel, EMAS, ISO 14024, EN 13432, FSC, GRS, GOTS) is exempt from the label rules; a durability claim next to a test standard is exempt; a repairability claim on a page that also carries spare-parts or repair-manual information is exempt. Tune ext/rules.json if your house style needs it.

Yardstick

UCPD Article 13(3) requires Member States to provide, for widespread infringements, fines of at least 4% of the trader's annual turnover in the Member States concerned, or at least EUR 2,000,000 where turnover information is unavailable.

Scope

This extension reads text and reports pattern matches against the directive's listed practices. It is not legal advice and it does not read your substantiation files; a hit means the phrasing is in scope, not that you are liable, and a clean result means these 13 patterns did not fire.

Hub: https://getreadystack.com/tools/green-claim-lint-empco