United Kingdom: what did the DMCC Act change about green claims enforcement?

The same rules, transformed

The United Kingdom's green-claims regime underwent, between 2024 and 2025, the largest enforcement transformation in this theme — while changing almost nothing about what a claim must be. The substantive law of misleading environmental claims is materially the same as before; the Green Claims Code of 2021 remains the operative guidance; no greenwashing-specific statute exists. What changed is who decides and what deciding costs: since 6 April 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority can itself determine that consumer law has been breached — without court proceedings — and impose penalties up to the greater of £300,000 or ten per cent of worldwide turnover. The lesson the UK case teaches this theme is that enforcement architecture is substantive law's force multiplier: identical words on a package moved, in one commencement order, from litigation-risk to administrative-penalty-risk at competition-law scale.

This article sets out the machinery: the Act and its commencement, the direct-enforcement powers and their statutory limits, how green claims map onto the new framework, the pre-existing enforcement record that defines the CMA's expectations, and the corrections the commentary requires — including on the much-misquoted QR-code point.

The Act and its dates

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024 (DMCCA 2024, c. 13). Its consumer-protection core sits in two parts: Part 3, "Enforcement of consumer protection law", whose Chapter 4 creates the CMA's direct enforcement powers; and Part 4, Chapter 1, "protection from unfair trading", which replaces the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 as the substantive prohibition on misleading commercial practices. Both were commenced for practical purposes on 6 April 2025 by the Commencement No. 2 Regulations (SI 2025/272), which brought into force "Part 3 (enforcement of consumer protection law)" and "Chapter 1 (protection from unfair trading) of Part 4", with limited exceptions concerning consumer redress provisions. The CMA's technical note fixes the temporal boundary: "The UCP provisions in the DMCC Act come into force on 6 April 2025 and apply only in relation to commercial practices that take place on or after that date" (CMA, 2025b).

The direct-enforcement powers

Chapter 4 of Part 3 is the transformation's engine. Under it, the CMA may issue a provisional infringement notice, receive representations, and then — by final infringement notice — determine that a trader "has engaged, or is engaging, in a commercial practice constituting a relevant infringement", attaching directions and monetary penalties (DMCCA 2024, ss. 181–182). The penalty cap is statutory: "The amount of a monetary penalty imposed under subsection (4)(b) must be a fixed amount not exceeding £300,000 or, if higher, 10% of the total value of the turnover (if any) of the respondent" (DMCCA 2024, s. 182(6)) — with turnover assessed globally, and daily penalties available for continuing breaches (White & Case, n.d.). The CMA's own summary is plain: it "will be able to decide whether key consumer protection laws have been breached without having to take businesses to court, and we will be able to take direct action to tackle these breaches including through fines and redress" (CMA, 2025).

Two doctrinal features deserve precision. First, the penalty attaches to practices the CMA is satisfied have occurred or are occurring — "not in respect of a practice that the CMA is satisfied that the person is likely to engage in" (DMCCA 2024, s. 182(5)): the direct regime is retrospective and corrective, not anticipatory. Second, the substantive prohibitions contain no mental element on their face: the misleading-action definition turns on "the provision of false or misleading information relating to a product, a trader or any other matter relevant to a transactional decision" (DMCCA 2024, s. 226(1)), without any requirement of intent, knowledge or negligence. The consequence — that an innocent breach is still a breach — is an inference from the statutory text rather than a regulator's stated formula; fault enters at the penalty stage, where the CMA assesses whether "the level of culpability is high, medium or low by considering the extent to which the infringement was the result of deliberate action or a genuine mistake" (Slaughter and May, n.d.; see verification note). The court-based enforcement route of the prior era survives in parallel; the administrative route is an addition, not a substitution.

Where green claims sit

The DMCCA contains no environmental provisions. Green claims are policed as misleading actions and omissions under the general unfair-practices framework — "the DMCCA does not introduce a new regime specific to greenwashing" (Fieldfisher, n.d.) — with the Green Claims Code supplying the interpretive detail. The Code's six principles — claims "must be truthful and accurate", "clear and unambiguous", "must not omit or hide important relevant information", comparisons "fair and meaningful", claims must "consider the full life cycle", and "must be substantiated" (CMA, 2021) — carry over intact: law-firm analysis summarises the settled view that the pre-existing "rules and guidance... will continue to apply to the materially similar regime under the DMCCA, only now buttressed by the CMA's new enforcement powers" (Hausfeld, n.d.). The CMA's general unfair-practices guidance, CMA207 — first published 4 April 2025 — connects the frameworks, noting that consumers "who are particularly concerned about the environment, may be more susceptible to misleading environmental claims" and cross-referring to the Code for the definition of misleading environmental claims (CMA, 2025c).

The result is a regime with an unusual shape: a detailed, sector-specific claims code, enforceable through a general statute, by an authority holding turnover-scaled administrative penalties — guidance-heavy at the front, severe at the back.

The enforcement record: the template cases

The CMA's expectations were set before the new powers arrived, through the fashion-sector investigation opened in July 2022 and closed by undertakings on 27 March 2024. ASOS, Boohoo and George at Asda accepted commitments that function, in practice, as the UK's operational greenwashing rulebook: ambiguous terms such as "eco", "responsible" or "sustainable" are to be avoided without explanation, with statements "specific and clear, such as 'organic' or 'recycled'"; "[t]he percentage of recycled or organic fibres must be clearly displayed"; the criteria for environmental product ranges "must be clearly set out and detail any minimum requirements"; and the firms "must not use 'natural' imagery – such as green leaves – logos, or icons to suggest a product is more environmentally friendly than it actually is", with environmental targets requiring "a clear and verifiable strategy" and regular compliance reporting to the CMA (CMA, 2024). The undertakings' significance is doubled by the transformation: commitments negotiated under the court-based regime now describe conduct whose future breach the CMA could penalise directly.

The supply-chain guidance of 22 January 2026 extended the template upstream, addressing manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers jointly: "Both the retailer and the brand have a responsibility to ensure that the claim is accurate and not misleading" (CMA, 2026) — a chain-responsibility framing with obvious packaging application, since packaging claims are authored upstream and displayed at retail.

As of this article's verification date, no green-claims case has yet been brought under the direct-enforcement powers — a negative finding worth recording precisely. The CMA's first eight investigations under the new regime, launched 18 November 2025, concerned pricing and choice-architecture practices — drip pricing, misleading urgency messaging, automatically bundled services — accompanied by advisory letters to a hundred businesses (HSF Kramer, 2025). Green claims remain a stated enforcement priority in the surrounding commentary (White & Case, n.d.), but the first administrative greenwashing penalty is still pending; when it arrives, it will set the regime's real price list.

The QR-code correction

A specific misstatement about this regime circulates widely enough to require correction in terms: that CMA guidance provides that information "must not sit behind a QR code". The guidance says something narrower and more interesting. The January 2026 supply-chain guidance distinguishes two information classes: "Customers should not have to take further action such as scanning a QR code, following a hyperlink or expanding a drop-down list to access important information needed to understand the claim. Supporting or further information can however be provided via a QR code, hyperlink or online drop-down list" (CMA, 2026). The 2021 guidance is likewise permissive for the second class — definitions and explanations should sit "clear and close to the claim itself", but where space constrains, information may be "readily available by other means", including "a single click through link (and nothing provided via that link should contradict the main claim)" (CMA, 2021).

The accurate formulation is the two-layer rule this library documents across jurisdictions in the QR-codes article: qualifying information travels with the claim; supporting depth may sit behind the scan. The UK is not an outlier against the digital label; it is a co-author of the two-layer doctrine — and the misquotation matters because it is deployed, in packaging debates, as evidence that British law obstructs digital labeling generally. It does not.

What ten per cent means: the penalty in comparative frame

The headline number deserves examination, because its significance lies less in its magnitude than in its base and its trigger — and both distinguish the UK from every neighbouring regime.

The base is worldwide. Section 182(6)'s cap runs to "10% of the total value of the turnover... of the respondent", with law-firm analyses confirming the global-turnover reading and the availability of daily penalties "calculated by reference to global turnover, until the breach is remedied" (White & Case, n.d.). Set against the field: the EU's Modernisation Directive floor is "at least 4 % of the trader's annual turnover in the Member State or Member States concerned" — a national base, applicable to coordinated widespread infringements (the enforcement article); Canada's alternative penalty base is three per cent of worldwide gross revenues (Competition Act, s. 74.1). The UK thus combines the widest base with the highest rate in this theme's survey — a ceiling that, for a global consumer-goods group, dwarfs any monetary exposure the same conduct faces elsewhere.

The trigger is administrative. The EU's four-per-cent floor operates through national procedures; Canada's penalties issue from a specialist tribunal; American federal penalties require penalty-offense predicates. The UK's issue from the enforcer itself, on its own determination of infringement, subject to appeal — the shortest path from allegation to turnover-scaled liability in any surveyed jurisdiction. For a greenwashing case, the practical consequence is negotiating position: the undertakings-and-guidance machinery that produced the fashion commitments now operates against the backdrop of a penalty the CMA can impose without persuading any court, and the shadow of section 182 does its work in every compliance conversation whether or not a green-claims penalty is ever issued.

What moderates the picture is calibration practice. The CMA's published approach weighs culpability, and the first eight investigations' focus on pricing practices suggests green claims will meet the new powers first through their most clear-cut cases — objectively false statements rather than contestable qualifications. The ceiling, in other words, prices the egregious tail; the regime's everyday force is the undertakings template backed by the ceiling's existence. But the comparative fact stands and shapes multi-market packaging decisions now: identical artwork that risks a negotiated commitment in the Netherlands and a capped civil penalty federally in the United States risks, in the United Kingdom, a proportion of global revenues — and the strictest-market logic that already governs shared artwork acquires, with the DMCCA, a new strictest market.

Reading the regime forward

Three features will determine what the UK transformation means in practice. The first is penalty calibration: a cap at ten per cent of worldwide turnover prices egregious cases, but the CMA's published approach — culpability, harm, deterrence — leaves the ordinary greenwashing penalty's magnitude unknown until cases exist. The second is the guidance-to-penalty pipeline: the UK regime's distinctive structure, in which negotiated undertakings and published codes define expectations that administrative penalties then enforce, concentrates enormous practical authority in documents that are not law — the Code, CMA207, the supply-chain guidance — and the first contested penalty appeal will test how far that authority reaches. The third is the interaction with the EU's diverging regime: British green-claims law now shares principles with, but not the instruments of, the European framework — no blacklist, no badge gateway, no baseline rule — and multi-market packaging faces the two systems' differences at exactly the moment both acquired real teeth. For the field this theme maps, the UK's contribution is a controlled experiment: substantive continuity, enforcement revolution — and, within a few years, an answer to the question of how much of greenwashing's persistence was ever about the rules.

References

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2021) Environmental claims on goods and services (Green Claims Code guidance), 20 September. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2024) ASOS, Boohoo and Asda: greenwashing investigation (case page; undertakings of 27 March 2024). Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2025) Our new consumer enforcement regime, blog, 10 March. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2025b) Technical note on commencement of the DMCC Act consumer provisions, 4 April. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2025c) Unfair commercial practices (CMA207), 4 April, as updated 18 November 2025. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2026) Making green claims: getting it right across the supply chain, 22 January. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, c. 13. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026). Sections cited: 181–182, 226.

Fieldfisher (n.d.) Greenwashing under scrutiny: the CMA's new powers to tackle misleading environmental claims. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Hausfeld (n.d.) The DMCCA's consumer regime: a new anti-greenwashing toolkit. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

HSF Kramer (2025) UK consumer protection round-up 2025, December. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

SI 2025/272, The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No. 2) Regulations 2025. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Slaughter and May (n.d.) A new age dawns for consumer protection in the UK. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

White & Case (n.d.) Supply chain green claims: UK CMA signals enforcement escalation. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Note on sources and verification

Statutory quotations — sections 182(5), 182(6) and 226(1) — are verbatim from legislation.gov.uk; the commencement details are from SI 2025/272 and the CMA's technical note as cited. The characterisation of the substantive prohibitions as effectively strict-liability is an inference from the statutory text; no retrieved regulator source uses the phrase, and the culpability-at-penalty point rests on the Slaughter and May analysis of the CMA's approach. The undertakings' terms are from the CMA case page. Both QR-code passages are quoted verbatim from the respective CMA guidance documents; the January 2026 guidance's publication date is corroborated by the White & Case analysis. The negative finding on green-claims direct enforcement, and the description of the first eight investigations, rest on the HSF Kramer round-up and searches conducted at the verification date; a case may exist that these sources do not record. The retrieved CMA207 PDF contains an apparent typographical artefact in its penalty formulation ("10% or worldwide turnover"); the statute's wording governs and is the version quoted here. The contents of the 3 June 2026 update to the Green Claims Code collection page were not retrieved.

Last verified: 18 August 2026.