Two enforcement timelines are converging in 2026 that should be on every general counsel's radar. In Europe, the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive takes full legal effect on September 27 — and there is no grace period for claims already in distribution. If your environmental marketing uses terms like 'carbon neutral,' 'climate friendly,' or 'sustainable' without robust, verifiable substantiation, you are in scope. The European Commission has published detailed guidance making clear that even corporate website claims targeting consumers can be subject to national enforcement authority scrutiny.
In California, SB 253 and SB 261 — the state's Climate Accountability Package — impose mandatory, third-party-assured greenhouse gas emissions reporting starting this year. What's critical to understand is that the reporting thresholds apply to companies doing business in California, not just those headquartered there. Companies that have published forward-looking net-zero targets or emissions reduction commitments will now be producing verified data that regulators, investors, and plaintiff attorneys will hold directly against those claims.
The pattern in nearly every significant greenwashing enforcement action to date — from DWS to KLM to Shein — isn't malicious intent. It's a structural mismatch. Companies generate environmental data for internal decisions: supply chain choices, target-setting, operational planning. That data relies on estimates, industry averages, and modeled projections. It's adequate for internal use. It was never designed to defend an external legal claim.
When enforcement begins, the gap becomes visible. The claim was 'net zero by 2040.' The internal model assumed technology trajectories that haven't materialized. The data systems can't produce a trail of evidence that makes the original commitment defensible. That's the exposure — not what was said, but the absence of what was needed to stand behind it.
The German Federal Court of Justice's February 2025 ruling against FlixBus is instructive here. The court didn't find the company was acting in bad faith. It found that presenting coaches as 'the most environmentally friendly means of transport' without substantiated comparative data was misleading. The environmental claim was published in good faith. The data to support it wasn't there.
The question for general counsel isn't whether your company made environmental commitments. Most did. The question is whether a current review of those commitments — every public claim, every forward-looking statement, every product label — is on your pre-September calendar.
That review should answer three things:
That last point deserves particular attention. The enforcement guidance is explicit: forward-looking commitments that were accurate at publication but no longer reflect current performance represent one of the highest-risk scenarios regulators are focused on. Companies with net-zero targets should be validating those claims against current-year performance data quarterly — not annually, and not at the point of disclosure.
This isn't only a European problem. California's new reporting requirements will generate verified data that can be compared to existing public statements in any jurisdiction. And the UK's Competition and Markets Authority published new guidance in January 2026 specifically expanding supply chain liability for environmental claims — meaning even B2B representations are now in a more contested space.
If your general counsel's team hasn't conducted a systematic audit of existing environmental claims in the past six months, this is the moment to start. Not because the risk is theoretical — the enforcement calendar has made it concrete. But because the cost of acting now is a fraction of the cost of defending later.
The companies that will be most exposed are not necessarily the ones that made the boldest commitments. They're the ones whose data governance didn't keep pace with their communications. That's a fixable problem. The window to fix it is narrowing.
