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Legislative Decree No. 30/2026 is live with no grace period — what every US brand selling into Italy must audit, remove, or rewrite now
Your US brand's sustainability campaign was signed off by US counsel in Q2. The FTC Green Guides compliance review came back clear / was clean. Your European agency confirmed alignment with the EU-level directive. None of that protects you in Italy today.
Since 27 September 2026, every product label, website page, social media post, and retailer campaign visible to Italian consumers must comply with Italy's Legislative Decree No. 30 of 20 February 2026 (Decreto Legislativo 30/2026). There is no grace period. There is no sell-through allowance for stock already in distribution. If your product is on a shelf in Milan carrying a "carbon neutral" claim, you are in breach of Italian law right now unless you have the certification to prove it — and US certification may not be sufficient.
The enforcement authority is the Italian Competition Authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, AGCM). It can issue an immediate removal order without prior warning, impose fines between €5,000 and €10,000,000 per infringement, and — for cross-border coordinated infringements under EU Regulation 2017/2394 — escalate to 4% of your global annual turnover. The AGCM fined GLS Italy €8 million and Shein €1 million under the predecessor regime. Neither company was Italian. Neither was exempt / No exemption applied to either.
Legislative Decree No. 30/2026 amends the Italian Consumer Code (as amended) (Codice del Consumo, Legislative Decree No. 206 of 6 September 2005) — the primary statute governing unfair commercial practices in Italy. The amendments revise Articles 18, 21, 22, 23, 48, and 49, transposing EU Directive 2024/825 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 February 2024.
The new regime adds three categories of blacklisted practices to the existing list of per se unfair conduct.
First, generic unsubstantiated environmental claims. Terms such as "eco-friendly," "green," "natural," "sustainable," or "climate conscious" are prohibited unless supported by recognised proof and an approved or publicly audited certification scheme. The Italian Consumer Code now treats these claims the same way it treats false price claims: unlawful on their face, without any proportionality analysis.
Second, sustainability labels not anchored to an approved certification system. A label that looks like a green-tick or a leaf logo, but is based on a company's own internal scoring, is blacklisted. The certification scheme must be operated by a public authority or by a third-party body meeting publicly available criteria.
Third, claims about future environmental performance without binding, verifiable commitments. "We will be carbon neutral by 2030" is prohibited unless backed by a detailed, publicly available implementation plan with intermediate milestones, verified by an independent third party. Aspiration alone is no defence.
No — not automatically, and in most cases not at all.
Under Italian law as amended by Legislative Decree No. 30/2026, offset-based product claims — "carbon neutral," "climate positive," "net zero" applied to a single product — are now per se prohibited. This is not a high-substantiation standard that is difficult to meet. It is a categorical ban. A product may not be described as carbon neutral based on offset purchases alone, regardless of the quality or volume of those offsets.
This is the critical difference from the US position. The FTC Green Guides, updated in their 2012 version and under review since 2022 and not yet finalised, treat "carbon neutral" claims as potentially deceptive if unsubstantiated, but they apply a substantiation standard — meaning a well-documented offset programme, verified to a recognised standard, can in principle support the claim. Italy now says the claim cannot be made at all for a product unless the neutrality is achieved through actual emissions reductions in the product's lifecycle, not through compensation.
A US brand that built its Italian marketing around offset certification — even Gold Standard or Verra VCS verified — must remove or rewrite that messaging. Period. / That is the position..
The difference is structural, not merely a matter of degree.
The FTC Green Guides are administrative guidance. They are not legally binding rules. They set out the FTC's enforcement posture and create a reasonable basis for understanding what claims are likely to be challenged. Non-compliance with the Green Guides does not automatically constitute a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. A company can deviate from the Guides if it can substantiate its position.
Unlike in most common-law jurisdictions, Italy's greenwashing rules operate as statutory blacklists. A prohibited practice under the amended Italian Consumer Code is unlawful per se — the AGCM does not need to prove consumer harm, competitive distortion, or intent. The infringement is complete the moment the claim is published to an Italian consumer. There is no materiality threshold, no good-faith reliance defence, and no opportunity to cure before a fine attaches once an AGCM investigation opens.
Article 22's new requirement for comparative sustainability claims adds a further trap. If your packaging says "30% lower emissions than our previous formula," the comparison must be based on equivalent measurement methodologies. The underlying methodology must be named, publicly available, and recognised in Italy or under EU frameworks. An EPA-certified carbon accounting methodology is not automatically recognised. Your US attorney's sign-off on the comparison does not create a safe harbour under Italian law.
Yes, and the jurisdictional basis is straightforward.
The AGCM has jurisdiction over any commercial practice directed at Italian consumers, regardless of where the business is established. A US brand's website accessible in Italy, its Italian-language e-commerce pages, its product listings on Italian platforms, and its retailer-distributed printed materials all fall within AGCM reach. Article 27 of the Italian Consumer Code gives the AGCM authority to issue provisional injunctions — including immediate removal orders — on an emergency basis, without prior notice to the business.
The operational risk here is underestimated. An AGCM emergency order requiring "immediate removal" of a claim from all channels can reach your Italian distributor's website, your Amazon.it listings, and your own site simultaneously. You may have 24 to 48 hours to comply before non-compliance itself becomes an aggravating factor in the penalty calculation. US brands without a pre-established response protocol — a named Italian contact, a content takedown procedure, a clear line to the legal team — will scramble. The AGCM has issued such orders in prior enforcement actions and there is no procedural requirement for a warning letter first.
For cross-border infringements coordinated under EU Regulation 2017/2394 — where the same claim appears across multiple EU markets — the penalty ceiling rises from €10 million to 4% of global annual turnover. A US brand with EU-wide sustainability messaging faces that ceiling in Italy alone if the Italian infringement is characterised as part of a coordinated cross-border practice.
This is the risk that US counsel and marketing agencies consistently overlook, because it has no direct equivalent in US unfair trade practices law.
Under the amended Italian Consumer Code, a commercial practice includes any act, omission, course of conduct, or representation made "in connection with the promotion, sale or supply" of a product. The AGCM has applied this broadly in past proceedings to reach upstream manufacturers whose materials appeared in consumer-facing campaigns operated by Italian retailers or distributors.
If your US brand supplies a retailer with a product sheet, a sell-in deck, or branded POS materials containing claims that the retailer incorporates into its consumer advertising, your materials are part of the commercial practice visible to Italian consumers. You do not need a direct-to-consumer channel in Italy to be exposed. You need only a distributor relationship and marketing collateral.
The practical consequence: every co-branded campaign with an Italian retailer, every product image you provide for use on Italian e-commerce platforms, and every sustainability messaging guide you send to your European distribution partners should be reviewed against the new rules before it appears in a consumer context.
Nemo auditur propriam turpitudinem allegans — no one may rely on their own wrong as a defence. Under Italian administrative law, that principle applies with full force: telling the AGCM that your Italian retailer used your materials without authorisation will not extinguish your liability if you provided those materials knowing they would be used commercially.
As the legal theorist Lon Fuller observed, law functions as a framework of reciprocal obligation — the regulator enforces, but the regulated party is expected to have understood the rules before acting, not after.
The sequence matters as much as the substance. Work through these in order.
Map your Italian consumer touchpoints. Every channel where an Italian consumer can see your brand: your own website (including geo-served Italian pages), Amazon.it and other Italian marketplaces, distributor and retailer websites, physical retail, print materials, and social media accounts followed by Italian users. This is your exposure perimeter.
Identify every environmental claim in that perimeter. Flag generics ("sustainable," "eco," "green," "natural," "clean"), offset-based neutrality claims ("carbon neutral," "climate positive," "net zero"), future-performance claims ("we will be net zero by "), and comparative claims ("X% lower carbon than "). Each of these is a candidate for removal or rewrite.
Assess each claim against Italian-recognised certification. A claim that survives the audit needs a certification scheme that is either operated by a public authority or meets publicly available third-party criteria. The EU Ecolabel, for example, is a public-authority scheme. Your own internal carbon accounting, even if EPA-verified, is not sufficient for a product-level neutrality claim.
Build your AGCM response protocol. Identify who in your organisation has authority to authorise a content takedown across all Italian channels within 24 hours. Appoint Italian counsel with authority to receive AGCM correspondence. The cost of this preparation is measured in hours. The cost of not having it when an emergency order arrives is measured in days of non-compliance and potential aggravated penalties.
In matters involving Italian distribution agreements and marketing compliance, the most common error we see is a US or UK legal sign-off treated as covering Italian-law risk. It does not. Italian consumer law is a distinct statutory regime, and the AGCM applies it independently of FTC guidance, ASA rulings, or any other home-jurisdiction clearance. The second most common error is failing to audit distributor-supplied materials: the co-branded brochure your Italian partner printed two years ago, sitting in a retailer's store, can be the document an AGCM investigator picks up the day an inspection opens.
Does Italy's greenwashing law apply to a US brand that sells only through a local Italian distributor, not directly to consumers?
Yes. The AGCM's jurisdiction extends to any commercial practice reaching Italian consumers, regardless of the sales structure. If your brand's claims appear on the distributor's shelf, website, or marketing, you are within scope. Your distributor agreement does not insulate you from Italian consumer law liability.
My "carbon neutral" certification was issued by a recognised third party under a Verra or Gold Standard scheme. Is that enough for Italy?
No, not for a product-level claim. Legislative Decree No. 30/2026 treats offset-based product neutrality claims as blacklisted per se. The quality of the offset programme is not the issue. Italy now requires that product-level neutrality be achieved through actual lifecycle emissions reductions, not offset compensation. You would need to remove or fundamentally reframe the claim for the Italian market.
What is the first concrete step a US brand should take this week?
Commission a channel-by-channel audit of every environmental claim visible to Italian consumers and appoint Italian counsel experienced in AGCM proceedings to review the results. The audit scope should include your Italian distributors' websites and any co-branded materials they use. If any claim falls into the blacklisted categories — generic labels, offset-based neutrality, unverifiable future commitments — instruct your distribution partners to suspend use of those claims in Italy while the rewrite is prepared. Do not wait for an AGCM contact letter.
HREFLANG BLOCK:
Editorial Team — Panato Law Firm Staff
