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Netherlands: what do the ACM’s five rules of thumb actually require?
Status
Guidance interpreting existing Dutch and EU consumer law, not a labelling statute. Original ACM Guidelines on sustainability claims: 28 January 2021. Revised: 13 June 2023. EmpCo implementing legislation in the Netherlands is set to apply from 27 September 2026, the Union application date. ACM’s distinctive method is commitment-extraction without a finding of infringement.
Ecodesign · ConsciousPrescribed, banned or litigated wording — not production artwork
Fossil free living within one generationPrescribed, banned or litigated wording — not production artwork
Wording lock-ups record prescribed, banned or litigated phrases for identification and commentary. They are not production artwork and do not grant permission to print.
Five rules of thumb
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets published sustainability-claim guidelines on 28 January 2021 and revised them on 13 June 2023. The 2023 text, on ACM’s own account, reflects the authority’s interpretation of the law as it stood in 2023 and is offered as rules of thumb and practical examples, not as legislation (ACM, 2023). The five rules are:
- Use correct, clear, specific and complete sustainability claims.
- Substantiate your sustainability claims with facts, and keep them up-to-date.
- Make fair comparisons with other products or competitors.
- Describe your future sustainability ambitions in concrete and verifiable terms.
- Make sure that visual claims and labels are useful to consumers, not confusing.
Those five sentences are the Dutch companion to the ACCC’s eight principles and the CMA’s Green Claims Code: a specialised reading of general unfair-trading law, published so that traders cannot claim surprise. Rule 1 is the generic-claims problem treated in the generic-claims article. Rule 4 is the future-claims problem treated in the comparative article. Rule 5 is the visual-impression problem the GLAD court later named in Australia. None of the five is packaging-specific. All five apply to a pack because a pack is a commercial practice.
From 27 September 2026 the Empowering Consumers Directive applies in the Netherlands on the Union timetable. ACM’s guidelines page records the Dutch implementing act and that application date (ACM, 2023). The guidelines will then sit alongside a per se blacklist they were not written to describe. Traders who treated the 2023 rules of thumb as the ceiling will find that generic environmental claims and offset-based climate-neutral product claims have become unfair in all circumstances, not merely in need of specification.
Commitments instead of fines
ACM’s method is the other half of the Dutch lesson. On 13 September 2022 it announced that Decathlon and H&M would adjust or stop using sustainability claims on clothes and websites following an ACM investigation, and would donate €400,000 and €500,000 respectively to sustainability causes. ACM imposed no sanction, because the commitments were given (ACM, 2022a; 2022b). The who-enforces article records the same outcome and the “Ecodesign” / “Conscious” style of unspecified benefit as the target. Subsequent ACM actions have followed the same pattern of published correction without a turnover fine: Booking.com’s “Travel Sustainable” programme taken offline (March 2024); supermarket claims removed at Albert Heijn (April 2024) and Plus (December 2023); Vattenfall to stop “Fossil free living within one generation” (July 2024); Eneco to stop “Faster towards climate neutral” (May 2024) (ACM, 2023, related-publication list).
The method is enforcement as standard-setting. A commitment decision publishes the compliance standard the authority was prepared to accept, and it does so without an infringement finding that a later court would have to respect. For packaging, the practical consequence is that ACM’s examples — unspecified “eco” descriptors, unexplained logos, unverifiable future slogans — are the Dutch prior art for what a pack should not do, even in the absence of a packaging statute.
What a printer should take
| Field | Rule |
|---|---|
| Governing law | Dutch civil / consumer law implementing the UCPD, as interpreted in ACM’s 2021/2023 guidelines. EmpCo from 27 September 2026. |
| Document status | Guidelines. Not a code, not a statute, not a pre-clearance. |
| Specification | Rule 1: name the benefit. “Ecodesign” or “Conscious” on a garment or a pack, without the fact that makes it so, is the 2022 case. |
| Visuals and labels | Rule 5: marks and pictures are claims. A leaf, a globe or a house badge that is not a qualifying sustainability label is inside the rule, and from 27 September 2026 inside EmpCo’s sustainability-label blacklist if it is not a qualifying scheme or public mark. |
| Future wording | Rule 4: a generation-scale slogan is a present representation. It must be concrete and verifiable now. |
| Enforcement texture | Commitments, donations, published withdrawals. Do not read the absence of a fine as the absence of a rule. |
Traps
The first trap is filing the ACM guidelines next to a brand book and treating them as optional tone. They are the authority’s reading of mandatory law. The second is assuming that because Decathlon and H&M were not fined, the next trader will also be offered a donation. Commitment-extraction is a method ACM chose; it is not a right. The third is leaving Dutch artwork unchanged until EmpCo’s application date. The 2023 guidelines already require specification, substantiation, fair comparison, verifiable ambition and non-confusing visuals. EmpCo raises the floor; it does not create the floor.
References
ACM (2023) Guidelines regarding Sustainability claims (revised; page records 2021 original and 13 June 2023 revision).. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
ACM (2022a) Going forward, Decathlon and H&M will provide better information about sustainability to consumers, 13 September.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
ACM (2022b) Commitment decision for H&M regarding sustainability claims, 13 September.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
Directive (EU) 2024/825 OJ L, 2024/825, 6.3.2024.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
Note on sources and verification
The five rules of thumb, the 28 January 2021 / 13 June 2023 dates, the characterisation as interpretation-not-legislation, and the list of later ACM actions (Booking.com, Albert Heijn, Plus, Vattenfall, Eneco, Zalando) are from ACM’s guidelines page as retrieved on 22 August 2026. H&M’s €500,000 donation and the “no sanctions because of the commitment” formula are from the H&M commitment-decision page of 13 September 2022. Decathlon’s €400,000 figure is from ACM’s Dutch-language 13 September 2022 announcement as indexed, and matches the figure already used in this library’s who-enforces article. The English Decathlon-and-H&M announcement URL returns 404 from some crawlers; the commitment-decision URLs remain the citable records. EmpCo’s 27 September 2026 Dutch application is as stated on ACM’s guidelines page.
Last verified: 22 August 2026.