EmpCo applies from 27 September: what changes for cocoa sustainability claims
On 27 September, the EU’s Empowering Consumers Directive starts to bite. From that day, it decides what companies are allowed to tell you about sustainability on a chocolate wrapper. There’s no grace period, and it covers stock already sitting on shelves.
We asked Nicolas Lambert to look at what that means for cocoa. He interviewed 12 stakeholders. Here’s what he found:
- Company-owned labels that aren’t based on a qualifying certification scheme can no longer be shown to consumers. To qualify, a scheme has to be open to all traders, independently verified, written with outside stakeholders, and have rules for what happens when someone falls short. Vague environmental claims are out too, unless the detail sits right there on the same pack or advert.
2. Third-party schemes welcome this and are getting ready. Fairtrade has reworked its claims policy and its governance. WFTO, which wasn’t a full certification system before, is bringing in an external certifier and applying it beyond the EU as well.
3. The large brands are a different story. They plan to keep their programs running, but many will take their own labels off the packaging and move the messaging online, where almost nobody looks. One big chocolate producer has already done it. Stakeholders call this greenhushing. Companies keep spending, but stop talking about it, and over a few years that makes the spending harder to defend inside the company.
4. The point we’d underline: credibility is not impact. EmpCo can make claims more honest. It doesn’t touch farmer income, deforestation, child labor or how companies buy their cocoa, and it was never meant to.
5. Enforcement is national, and national is where it gets uneven. The Commission opened infringement proceedings against 20 Member States in May for missing the transposition deadline, and by late August some still hadn’t finished. The same claim on the same bar may be read differently depending on the country. Whether EmpCo delivers clarity or just quieter marketing will be settled in those national decisions, and in company boardrooms.