Whose working conditions is your packaging talking about?

New marketing rules on greenwashing started to apply in Finland on 27 September 2026, as the Finnish Consumer Protection Act was amended to implement the EU’s EmpCo Directive. True to the word, the debate has been almost entirely about greenwashing: what can be said about carbon neutrality, whether “environmentally friendly” is still allowed, and what to do with old packaging.

Yet the most interesting sentence in the EmpCo Directive (Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, (EU) 2024/825) is not about the environment at all.

According to recital 9 of the Directive, a trader should not make a generic claim such as “conscious”, “sustainable” or “responsible” based exclusively on excellent environmental performance. The reason given is that such claims relate to other characteristics as well, such as social characteristics.

In other words, the EU legislator has put in writing that “responsible” is also a claim about working conditions. The EU Ecolabel alone does not justify it.

The Finnish Consumer Ombudsman takes the same line. A draft guideline published for comments in September calls on companies to replace generic “responsible” and “sustainable” type expressions with specific claims about how the product or company is responsible.

What the new rules say about social characteristics

They are main characteristics of a product. The rules on misleading actions now expressly cover a product’s environmental or social characteristics. In the Finnish Consumer Protection Act, misleading information may now concern, in particular, the “environmental, social and circular economy characteristics” of a product. The Directive’s recitals explain what social characteristics mean: working conditions such as adequate wages, social protection, a safe working environment and social dialogue, as well as human rights, equal treatment, inclusion and ethical commitments.

The list is practically the same one used to map supply chain risks in human rights due diligence.

They fall within the scope of sustainability labels. A sustainability label is a voluntary trust mark, quality mark or equivalent that refers to the environmental or social characteristics of a product, process or business. A sustainability label may not be displayed unless it is based on a certification scheme or established by public authorities. A certification scheme requires, among other things, independent third-party monitoring. A company’s own “Responsibly Sourced” logo, or a label based on its supplier code of conduct, will no longer do.

They are covered in comparisons. If a company offers a service comparing products on, for example, their social characteristics, consumers must be informed of the comparison method.

What the rules do not say

Social claims are not in the same position as environmental claims. The absolute prohibitions apply to environmental claims only: generic environmental claims without recognised excellent environmental performance, claims based on offsetting emissions, claims about an entire product or business when they concern only one aspect, and claims about future environmental performance without a verifiable plan.

There is no equivalent blacklist for social claims. They are assessed case by case: is the claim misleading, and does it affect the consumer’s decision?

In principle, this has always been the case. What has changed is that social characteristics are now written into the law by name. That tells the enforcer where to look, and tells companies what is a compliance issue rather than mere communication. In Finland, a breach can lead to an injunction, a penalty payment imposed by the Market Court and consumer damages claims.

A social claim is always about someone else

An environmental claim is usually about the product: its materials, emissions or recyclability. Evidence may be hard to produce, but it concerns a characteristic of the product that can often be measured.

A social claim is almost always about someone else. “Made under fair working conditions” is a claim about a factory the company does not own, and probably also about subcontractors it may not even know.

In August 2025, the Italian Competition Authority AGCM fined companies of the Armani group EUR 3.5 million for misleading ethical claims. The claims were not on packaging. What was assessed was the company’s code of ethics, supplier code of conduct, websites and sustainability reporting. At the same time, serious labour violations had been found in the subcontracting chain, including removed machine safety devices, unhygienic workplaces and widespread undeclared work. According to the authority, the risks in subcontracting were known to the company.

The case was decided under the old rules, before EmpCo applied. It shows two things. Social claims were enforceable even before the reform. And far more than an advertising slogan can be treated as a claim.

A trader must be able to substantiate its claims. The evidence for a social claim is information about the supply chain: where the product comes from, what risks are involved, what has been done about them and how this is monitored. That is exactly the information human rights due diligence produces.

Is consumer law the CSDDD most companies will actually face?

Human rights due diligence is usually seen as a matter for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). After the Omnibus reform, however, the Directive will apply to only around thirty companies in Finland, and not until 26 July 2029.

Consumer protection law has no size threshold. It applies to every company that markets products to consumers, and it applies now.

I have been thinking about what follows from this. For a mid-sized consumer brand, the first question from an authority about what it knows of working conditions in its supply chain may not come through the CSDDD at all. It may come from the consumer authority, and it may start with a line on the packaging or the sustainability section of a website.

The logic is different. The CSDDD requires companies to carry out due diligence. Consumer law requires nothing if a company claims nothing. But once it makes a claim, it must be able to prove it, and in practice that proof only comes from due diligence.

I do not think this makes consumer law a substitute for human rights regulation. It asks a narrower question: is what you say true? But it may be the point where many companies discover, for the first time, that they do not have an answer.

Certification is a safe harbour for the label, not for the claim

The new rules steer companies towards certification schemes. That is understandable: instead of a company’s own logo, the consumer sees a label backed by independent monitoring.

Two things should still be kept apart.

First, a certification label covers what the certification scheme covers. If the label concerns one raw material or one production stage, it says nothing about the rest. “Responsibly produced” written next to the label is a different claim from the label itself, and it is assessed separately.

Second, in human rights regulation, certification is seen as one tool among others, not as a substitute for due diligence. The Commission’s guidelines on the Forced Labour Regulation mention certification schemes alongside traceability, responsible purchasing practices and worker-driven monitoring. Certification schemes are valuable, but their ability to detect forced labour, for example, varies.

Consumer law asks whether the label is reliable. Human rights regulation asks whether you know what is happening in your supply chain. A certificate answers the first question, but not necessarily the second.

The evidence is in the contracts, or it does not exist

When the evidence for a claim sits with the supplier, the question moves to the contracts.

If marketing promises adequate wages, the company should have a contractual right to wage information. If the packaging states the product’s origin, the supplier should be obliged to notify changes of origin. If the claim covers the whole supply chain, the contract should extend to subcontracting.

A typical sustainability annex sets requirements for the supplier and gives the buyer audit and termination rights. Rarely does it oblige the supplier to provide exactly the information the buyer would need to substantiate its own claims, or set out how risks are prevented together before anything has happened.

That is why contracts should be expected to do more than list requirements. From a due diligence perspective, a good contract is proactive: it builds information flows, cooperation and remediation into the business relationship instead of leaving them as sanctions after a breach. The JARGONFREE research project, which I am part of, has put together a practical toolkit for this, the JARGONFREE Compass for Sustainable Contracting. It is freely available at www.jargonfree.fi.

What is still uncertain

There is no case law on the new rules yet. The Finnish Consumer Ombudsman’s guideline is still a draft, and its focus is on environmental claims. It is not clear how far into the supply chain enforcers will expect evidence for social claims to reach.

Finland also has a limited transition period: for some labelling of products placed on the market before 27 September 2026, the new prohibitions apply only from 27 March 2027. The transition does not cover online advertising or new packaging, for example, and it does not change the general prohibition of misleading practices.

The proposed Green Claims Directive, which was meant to regulate the substantiation of claims in more detail, has stalled, and it too covered environmental claims only. No dedicated evidence rule for social claims is therefore on the horizon.

Where to start

1. Map what you say. Packaging, online shop and advertising, but also sustainability pages and your code of ethics. Replace generic words such as “responsible” and “fair” with specific claims. Check that every trust or quality mark is backed by a certification scheme or a public authority, and that the text next to a label does not promise more than the label covers.

2. Link every claim to evidence. For each claim, record which part of the supply chain it concerns and what information exists about it. Compare the claims with your own risk assessments and audit findings too. An empty row tells you what not to say. A contradiction with your own due diligence material is an even more serious warning sign.

3. Make sure the claim stays true. Supplier contracts should give you the right to the information needed as evidence and oblige suppliers to notify changes. Internally, it should be clear who approves a social claim before it is published.

Finally

If I were to do one thing based on this, I would search the online shop and packaging for every instance of “responsible” or “fair” and ask the same question each time: whose working conditions does this claim describe, and how do we know?

If you want to review your company’s social claims and the evidence behind them, get in touch.

// Juho Saloranta, Sustainability Lawyer, Nexus Legal

Sources

Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition, recitals 3, 7 and 9 and Article 1 · Finnish Act amending the Consumer Protection Act 573/2026 (Chapter 2, sections 6, 6 b, 8 f, 15 a and 19 a) · Government Proposal HE 47/2026 vp · Finnish Consumer Ombudsman, draft guideline on sustainability and environmental claims, September 2026 · AGCM, decision PS12793 (Giorgio Armani S.p.A. and G.A. Operations S.p.A.), 1 August 2025 · Directive (EU) 2024/1760 (CSDDD) · Directive (EU) 2026/470 (Omnibus I) · Commission Communication C(2026) 4386 final, guidelines on the application of Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 (Forced Labour Regulation), section 4.5.1.1 · JARGONFREE Compass for Sustainable Contracting, www.jargonfree.fi