CPC Network Common Understanding on EmpCo 'old stock' enforcement

The Common Understanding was developed through consultations between CPC authorities between January and June 2026. It is a welcome and timely signal of a proportionate enforcement approach across the EU, published just under three months before the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/825, also called the ECGT or EmpCo Directive) began to apply.

It does not reinterpret EmpCo and does not bind national authorities. What it does is set out a non-exhaustive series of principles that regulators can lean on when handling "old stock" cases in the early stages of the Directive.

What counts as "old stock"?

The Common Understanding defines old stock situations as products or packaging carrying environmental claims or sustainability labels that were manufactured, ordered, distributed or placed on retailers' shelves before 27 September 2026. These arise where traders face genuine, specific transitional difficulties in adapting existing inventory and packaging to the new EmpCo requirements in the time available.

Scope is broad. It covers claims and labels on the product itself, on packaging, in online listings and other digital interfaces, and in any advertising or commercial communication linked to the product or the trader.

The six enforcement principles

The CPC Network lays out six principles that national authorities can use when deciding how to treat old stock cases.

1. Compliance without delay. Old stock is not an exemption from EmpCo. Traders must move now to bring their products, packaging and communications into line with the new rules.

2. Phased enforcement. Regulators may sequence enforcement in the early months where genuine transitional difficulties exist. In prioritising, they can weigh: claims already flagged under existing UCPD case law or guidelines, online claims, the most harmful practices, non-packaging marketing materials, products with short shelf-life or fast stock rotation, and categories where no real transitional difficulty exists. They can also consider the trader's role, size, resources, economic capacity and good-faith compliance effort.

3. Practical constraints. Regulators can take account of objective, case-by-case constraints — packaging cycles, existing stock volumes, prior production or purchase orders, supply-chain dependencies, long product shelf-life, and the technical feasibility and proportionality of any corrective measure.

4. Reasonable and proportionate trader effort. Depending on the case, reasonable steps can include: removing or correcting online claims, updating advertising and promotional material, adapting future packaging and new orders, applying stickers or removing labels where feasible, displaying corrective information at the point of sale, coordinating with suppliers and other supply-chain actors, and keeping timestamped records showing what was done and when.

5. No disproportionate or unreasonable measures. Authorities may refrain from ordering the destruction or recall of products to address genuine transitional compliance issues where doing so would be disproportionate — for example because it would create disproportionate cost or unnecessary environmental harm. Austria has already gone further in its transposing legislation: civil-law EmpCo claims can only be brought in respect of goods placed on the market after 27 September 2026, on the working assumption that non-compliant stock rotates out within three years.

6. Compliance-first enforcement. Regulators can investigate, prioritise and sequence enforcement by the gravity of the infringement and the specific facts. For justified old stock situations in the early phase, authorities are encouraged to favour compliance-oriented tools — awareness-raising, guidance, clarifications, information requests and, where necessary, requests for corrective action with a reasonable timeline — over immediate sanctions.

What this means in practice

It is not a safe harbour. The Common Understanding is non-binding, and each national competent authority keeps full discretion to act in the cases in front of it. Phased enforcement is not a licence to delay full compliance beyond 27 September 2026.

Document your compliance work. The framework explicitly rewards good-faith effort. Keep records of internal compliance policies, the corrective actions you take, and the dates on which you take them — they will matter in any regulator engagement.

Fix online claims first. The Common Understanding singles out digital claims as not sharing the operational constraints of physical stock. Website copy, product pages, ads, social posts and influencer content should be reviewed and corrected without delay.

Destruction and recall are generally off the table for genuine transitional issues where they would be disproportionate — but this is still a case-by-case call. Businesses with large volumes of affected stock, or complex multi-jurisdictional exposure, should take dedicated legal advice.

How Gilbert helps

Gilbert's scanner is built around exactly the priorities the CPC Network calls out: catch the online claims first, keep a per-claim evidence trail, and surface the SKUs most likely to sit on shelves past 27 September 2026 so you can plan corrective measures in time. Use it to run a website-wide baseline scan now, then re-scan on a schedule as national regulators sharpen their expectations.

Citations: CPC Network, Common Understanding on the enforcement of "old stock" situations under the ECGT / EmpCo Directive (30 June 2026), commission.europa.eu; Directive (EU) 2024/825 (Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition), eur-lex.europa.eu