Find every risky claim in your store, prove or fix it in one guided flow, and auto-generate the legal notices the new law demands — without ever touching your copy.
From 27 September 2026, vague environmental claims like "eco-friendly" and "climate neutral" become illegal across the EU unless you can prove them. Substanza - EU Green Claims does the work inside Shopify admin and keeps a record of what backs every claim.
Directive (EU) 2024/825 — "Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition" — rewrites the rules for selling to EU shoppers. Three things change at once.
"Eco-friendly", "sustainable", "climate neutral" and offset-based claims are banned unless backed by recognised proof. Generic and carbon-offset claims can't be substantiated at all.
A harmonised legal-guarantee notice and a per-product durability label become mandatory pre-contractual information on your storefront, in the language each country requires.
National regulators enforce it, with the usual unfair-practice penalties. Most member states have put it into national law — Italy as D.Lgs 30/2026, Germany through the UWG (Drittes UWG-ÄndG). Where a country is still completing its transposition, its regulators can act under their general unfair-competition rules in the meantime.
If you sell to shoppers in the EU on Shopify, this applies to you — wherever your business is based.
Substanza - EU Green Claims is a compliance tool, not a law firm. It reports open items or their absence and does not constitute legal advice.
Substanza - EU Green Claims watches every place a claim can appear, tells you what the law needs, and keeps a tamper-evident record of it all. Here's the loop it runs for every claim in your store.
You write product copy, or import it. Somewhere a listing says it's good for the planet.
"Our bottles are eco-friendly and 100% sustainable."
A hybrid rules + AI scan reads copy, metafields, translations, policies and your theme.
Description · metafields · translations · theme
Add evidence; the app checks the EU Ecolabel (ECAT) registry live. Or rewrite the claim.
Certificate.pdf · Licence FR/020/001
The claim validates, the legal notice renders to shoppers, and the event is anchored in the audit chain.
· The app never edits your product copy. Its only automatic action is setting a product to Draft — always explained, always logged, and always reversible by resolving the claim.
Six modules working together — from the first scan of your catalog to what the shopper sees on your storefront.
A hybrid rules + AI scan reads product copy, metafields, translations, collections, shop policies, pages and your live theme for environmental and social claims. By default we check every storefront page the way shoppers see it: each page is opened in a real browser, so claims added by apps and scripts are checked too, not only the page's HTML. On product pages we also read the pictures, so an eco badge or trust seal drawn in a product image is caught as well.
A guided evidence flow with built-in legal guardrails. Optionally auto-Drafts products that introduce an unproven new claim — until you prove or fix it.
Live EU Ecolabel licence lookups against the European Commission's database. A claim validates only on a confirmed, current match — never fabricated, never auto-rejected. For Blue Angel, Nordic Swan and the Austrian Ecolabel, we link you to the scheme's own lookup. A certificate you upload is checked against what the scheme's certificates show, and any warning is listed for you to read. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. From the certificate we read the licence number and expiry date where we can, for you to check: see which schemes.
Generates the official IR 2025/1960 legal-guarantee notice and per-product durability label for each of the 27 markets, ready to drop into your theme. A variant can have its own model, guarantee years and brand, and the label follows the variant the shopper picks.
A hash-chained, append-only log of every compliance event, anchored daily and exportable as a full compliance report you can hand to a regulator.
Product-page and cart blocks show shoppers the official guarantee notice, the durability label (per variant, where your variants are different models) and repair information. An optional certificate block shows shoppers the proof behind your green claims, such as a certificate they can download. The notice comes in English, German, Italian and French so far; the label carries all 24 EU languages. Every block is listed below.
Your protection level sets how the app responds when it finds a green claim without proof behind it. Pick one of three in the app's Settings and change it whenever you like; a change takes effect straight away.
We flag, you decide. Every unproven claim we find is listed for you with a recommendation, and nothing is taken off sale for it.
Covers new products: ones never published, or published in the last 3 hours. Write a claim we can't match to proof on one of those and it goes to Draft until you prove or fix it. A product on sale for longer than that stays on sale, and its claims are flagged for you.
Everything the recommended level does, and it covers products already on sale too: write or edit a claim with no proof on file and the product goes to Draft until you prove or fix it, however long it has been live.
·Whatever the level, the app never edits your copy and logs every action it takes. Levels act on products; on your pages, collections, policies and blog we can only flag what we find.
You add each block once in Shopify's theme editor. Until a block is on a live page, shoppers see nothing from it.
Shows the official EU legal guarantee notice and any repair information you have entered. For products that qualify it also shows the durability label.
The certificate block: for each claim you have backed with a certificate it shows the certificate, with a download link when you uploaded the file. A claim you only state yourself is shown as your own statement, with a note that no outside body has checked it. Certificate pictures stay off until you switch on “Show certificate previews” in Settings.
Shows the durability label for each cart line that qualifies, with the model, years and brand of that line's variant.
Shows the same labels in your theme's slide-out cart. Switch it on once under App embeds.
·Per variant too. Give a variant its own model, guarantee years or brand in the “Different models per variant” section of a product in the app; a box you leave empty uses the product's value. The label then follows the variant the shopper picks, on the product page and in the cart. On a theme where we can't follow the shopper's choice, the product page shows one label per model, each captioned with the variants it covers.
If a question comes up while you're using the app, or something doesn't work the way it should, write to us at support@substanza.slmail.me. No question is too small, and every bug report is welcome.
We acknowledge support requests within one day — every day of the year, weekends and public holidays included — with a status update and next steps. Resolution timing depends on issue complexity.
What the Shopify app covers today — and what it does not cover yet.
Every EU country gets the EU guarantee notice on the storefront. Liechtenstein shows the same notice in German, and Norway and Iceland show a short line in Norwegian or Icelandic instead; the EU rules are not in force in those three countries yet. Not covered: the UK, Switzerland and the US.
EU-wide rules apply in every market. Underneath them sits one national act per country, and they are not in the same state: 19 of the 27 have adopted theirs, 6 are still in draft and 2 have none. Every act is named in the table below. The app encodes national rule extras for Italy, France and Germany today; everywhere else it applies the EU baseline.
EU countries had to adopt the rules by 27 March 2026, and they apply from 27 September 2026. Two applied earlier: Greece from 10 July and the Netherlands from 16 July 2026. Where a country has not finished transposing, its regulators can still act under their general unfair-competition rules — a missing act is not a free pass.
Rule checks in English, German, French and Italian, plus an AI review of your product copy in any EU language. The app's own screens are in English.
The official EU guarantee notice comes in English, German, Italian and French so far; other languages show the English version for now. The durability label uses the official artwork, which carries all 24 EU languages, and the notice links to the EU's Your Europe page in the shopper's language. Where a variant has its own model, years or brand, the label shows the one for the variant the shopper picks.
Every EU Ecolabel licence is checked live against the European Commission's database, in every real licence-number format. A claim is marked proven only on a confirmed, current match; if the database can't be reached or the licence has expired, it stays pending — never auto-rejected.
·Up to 250 deep page checks per store per day, the same for every store. Pages past the limit are read as HTML that day and fully checked first on the next day's run.
·On product pages, the deep page check also reads the pictures: a green claim drawn in an image, such as an “eco-friendly” badge on a product photo, is recorded like any other claim and marked as found in an image. Up to 200 product pages per store per day are read this way; past that, a product page is checked as text only that day.
| Country | National transposing act | Status | Applies from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria AT | UWG-Novelle 2026 + VerbRÄG 2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Belgium BE | Loi du 22 juillet 2026 (MB 4 Aug 2026) | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Bulgaria BG | ЗИД на ЗЗП, ДВ бр. 87/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Croatia HR | ZID ZZP, NN 59/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Cyprus CY | Ν. 122(Ι)/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Czechia CZ | Draft — third reading pending | Draft | — |
| Denmark DK | Lov nr. 558 af 27/05/2025 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Estonia EE | 779 SE, RT I 03.07.2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Finland FI | Laki 573/2026 + asetus 664/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| France FR | Draft — adopted by the Sénat, pending the Assemblée nationale | Draft | — |
| Germany DE | Drittes UWG-ÄndG (BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 43) + BGBl. I Nr. 28 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Greece GR | Ν. 5317/2026 | In force | 10 Jul 2026 |
| Hungary HU | 2025. évi XCIV. tv. + Korm. rend. 116/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Ireland IE | S.I. No. 124/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Italy IT | D.Lgs. 30/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Latvia LV | NKAL + PTAL amendments | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Lithuania LT | XV-577 + XV-576 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Luxembourg LU | Loi du 9 juin 2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Malta MT | None — verified negative | None | — |
| Netherlands NL | Implementatiewet, Stb. 2026, 152 | In force | 16 Jul 2026 |
| Poland PL | Draft — Sejm druk 2799, passed the Sejm (4 Sep) and the Senate (24 Sep 2026), awaiting the President | Draft | — |
| Portugal PT | None found | None | — |
| Romania RO | OUG nr. 18/2026 | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Slovakia SK | Zákon č. 310/2025 Z. z. | Adopted | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Slovenia SI | Draft — government stage | Draft | — |
| Spain ES | Draft — anteproyecto, not yet lodged | Draft | — |
| Sweden SE | Draft — inquiry only (SOU 2025:124) | Draft | — |
Status as at 30 September 2026, from our own transposition corpus; we re-check it as acts are published. “Adopted” means the act is law and applies from 27 September 2026 with the rest of the EU; “In force” means it applied earlier. A country with no act is still not a free market: its regulator can act under general unfair-competition rules, and the EU-wide rules in this app apply there either way. This table is the legal basis, not the app's feature coverage — what the app checks in each country is the cards above.
How the app checks each scheme today. Only the EU Ecolabel is looked up in a registry by the app itself. For every scheme, a certificate you upload is checked against what that scheme’s certificates show, and any warning is listed for you to read. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. For a general claim such as “eco-friendly”, the app accepts only an EU Ecolabel or ISO 14024 Type I certificate.
| Scheme | Checked against | What we check | Read from your certificate | Label and general claims |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EU Ecolabel | Live registry lookupThe European Commission's EU Ecolabel catalogue | That the licence number is listed and its end date has not passed. A current match confirms it automatically; no match never rejects it. We check a certificate you upload against what EU Ecolabel certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Licence number and expiry dateFilled into the form’s licence and expiry boxes for you to confirm. | Label may be shown.Can support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| ISO 14024 Type I national ecolabels. Blue Angel, Nordic Swan and the Austrian Ecolabel are all ISO 14024 Type I national ecolabels. In the app they are not separate choices: you choose “ISO 14024 Type I national ecolabel”, and the app recognises the programme from the name or the licence format printed on the certificate. Any other Type I programme can be chosen under the same entry. | ||||
| Blauer Engel (Blue Angel) | Format check + linkBlue Angel product search | Checks that the licence number has the scheme's format, then links you to the scheme's own search. You look the licence up there. We check a certificate you upload against what Blauer Engel (Blue Angel) certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Licence numberThe licence box is filled in for you to confirm. The expiry box is filled in only when the certificate prints an end date. Most Blue Angel certificates print no end date, so there is often nothing to read. | Label may be shown.Can support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| Nordic Swan Ecolabel | Format check + linkEcolabelling Sweden's Nordic Swan product search | Checks that the licence number has the scheme's format, then links you to the scheme's own search. You look the licence up there. We check a certificate you upload against what Nordic Swan Ecolabel certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Licence number and expiry dateFilled into the form’s licence and expiry boxes for you to confirm. | Label may be shown.Can support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| Österreichisches Umweltzeichen (Austrian Ecolabel) | Format check + linkAustrian Ecolabel products by category | Checks that the licence number has the scheme's format, then links you to the scheme's own search. You look the licence up there. We check a certificate you upload against what Österreichisches Umweltzeichen certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Licence number onlyThe licence box is filled in for you to confirm. The expiry date is not read: our test certificate prints it the German way (“7. September 2026”), which the reader does not know yet, so the expiry box stays empty. | Label may be shown.Can support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| ISO 14024 Type I national ecolabel (any other programme) | Document uploadNo registry lookup | No licence check: with a licence the app does not recognise, there is nothing to check it against or link to. We check a certificate you upload against what ISO 14024 Type I national ecolabel certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Not tested yetGeneral rules only: it looks for a number after “licence” or “certificate” and a date after “valid until” or “expiry”. This entry stands for programmes the app does not know by name, so there is no certificate to test it on.Anything it finds goes into the form’s licence and expiry boxes for you to confirm. | Label may be shown.Can support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| FSC | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what FSC certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| GOTS | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what GOTS certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| Fairtrade | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what Fairtrade certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Not tested yetNo real Fairtrade certificate was available to test on. Anything it finds is listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| PEFC | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what PEFC certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Depends on who issued the certificateOn the one PEFC certificate we tested, we read the scheme name only. What it finds is listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| RWS | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what RWS certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| EU organic logo | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what EU organic logo certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| OEKO-TEX | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what OEKO-TEX certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| Cradle to Cradle | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what Cradle to Cradle certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
| MSC | Document uploadNo registry lookup | We check a certificate you upload against what MSC certificates show and list any warning for you to read. If the check cannot run, it runs again later. Where the law lets a certificate prove the claim, your confirmation makes it Proven. | Read for you to compareLicence number and expiry date are listed on the “We read … off your certificate” card, to compare with your document. This scheme has no licence or expiry boxes, and nothing is looked up for it in a register. | Allowed if the scheme meets the EU certification-scheme test. The app does not check this.Cannot support a general environmental claim such as “eco-friendly”. |
·How the reading works. When you add a certificate to a claim, the app lists what it finds under your upload, on the “We read … off your certificate” card. You check each value against the document and tick “These match my certificate.” before you go on. On the last step the app also lists anything its own check of the document found, and you tick one box to confirm the file is yours and correct. Only the EU Ecolabel and the ISO 14024 Type I programmes have licence and expiry boxes in the form; for every other scheme the card is all there is. The statuses above are for PDF certificates that contain text, tested on a real certificate of each scheme where one could be found; a different layout or another language may be read less fully. A photo or a scan goes through text recognition, which can misread, so check every value.
The Shopify app launches free. What you build with it stays yours.
For the first 2 months after we launch on the Shopify App Store, every store gets the full app at no cost.
You keep your data, and the theme blocks and certificates you have already made.
The paid plan's price will be announced before the free months end. Nobody is charged unless they choose a paid plan.
Get early access to Substanza - EU Green Claims: find every risky claim, prove or fix it, and keep the record.