Editorial of July 2025

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Backtracking on green claims? the EU’s fight against greenwashing at a crossroads

Ana Carcau (master’s student in European Union Law at the School of Law of University of Minho)

In March 2023, the European Commission presented the long-awaited proposal for a Green Claims Directive,[1] a legislative initiative designed to bring transparency and credibility to environmental claims made by companies across the European Union (EU). By targeting misleading environmental claims and demanding clear, science-based substantiation, the proposal aimed to restore consumer trust and ensure that the growing market for sustainable products was based on truth rather than illusion.[2] In short, it was widely seen as a cornerstone of the European Green Deal,[3] designed not only to inform but to empower consumers, protect genuinely sustainable companies and create a level playing field across the Single Market.[4]

However, recent reports suggest that the proposal now faces political and institutional limbo. On the 20th of June, reports emerged that the Commission was considering formally withdrawing the proposal, citing concerns over the potential regulatory burden on microenterprises, which number around 30 million across the EU. Although no formal withdrawal has occurred, the Commission confirmed that such a step remains on the table if Member States and the Parliament cannot agree on a carve-out for these businesses. Negotiations between co-legislators were suspended just before a crucial trilogue meeting scheduled for the 23rd of June, following growing resistance from several national governments and the center-right European People’s Party. With Italy retracting its support and no compromise in sight, the Polish Presidency of the Council has now effectively paused the legislative process indefinitely.[5]

Amid legislative gridlock and concerns about administrative burden, this retreat, or threat thereof, raises serious concerns about the EU’s regulatory resolve in the face of industry lobbying, political fatigue and an evolving institutional landscape. If the proposed Green Claims Directive is ultimately withdrawn, it will mark a significant step backwards in the EU’s fight against deceptive green marketing and could send a troubling signal about the fragility of the EU’s green legislative momentum at a time when it should be accelerating.[6] 

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Pfizergate: the billion euro silence and the future of EU transparency

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João Pedro Sousa (master’s student in European Union Law at the School of Law of the University of Minho)

The role of transparency in EU Law

Transparency within the European Union’s constitutional order is not a matter of institutional courtesy or political goodwill: it is a binding legal obligation anchored in the Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU). The EU’s legitimacy as a supranational legal order is not derived solely from formal democratic representation, but from its ability to guarantee open governance, accountability, and legal certainty. These principles converge in the citizen’s right of access to documents, which is both a general principle of EU law and a fundamental right under Article 42 CFREU.[1] Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 operationalises this right, setting the legal framework for public access to the documents of the EU institutions.[2] Article 11(2) TEU, which mandates the Union institutions to maintain an open, transparent, and regular dialogue with civil society, reinforces the legal architecture of transparency, a requirement that becomes especially salient when decisions involve significant public expenditure and health policy.

Against this normative backdrop, the judgment delivered by the General Court (GC) in Case T‑36/23 on 14 May 2025,[3] publicly referred to as “Pfizergate”, emerged as a pivotal episode in the evolution of EU transparency law. [4] The dispute was triggered by a request submitted by journalist Matina Stevi of The New York Times, seeking access to text messages allegedly exchanged between the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer.[5] The messages were reportedly exchanged during negotiations that led to a contract for the procurement of 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 vaccine, amounting to approximately €35 billion in public expenditure, plus an additional €2.4 billion in related contracts. The Commission’s refusal to grant access to these communications, on the grounds that they were not in its possession, raised fundamental questions about the scope of transparency obligations and the nature of institutional accountability during states of emergency. [6]

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Summaries of judgments: Stevi and the New York Times v Commission

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Summaries of judgments made in collaboration with the Portuguese judges and référendaire of the General Court (Maria José Costeira, Ricardo Silva Passos and Esperança Mealha)

Judgment of the General Court (Grand Chamber), 14 May 2025,

Case T-36/23 Stevi and The New York Times v Commission

Access to documents – Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 – Documents relating to the text messages exchanged between the President of the Commission and the chief executive officer of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer – Refusal to grant access – Presumption of veracity associated with the declaration of lack of possession of documents – Absence of plausible explanations making it possible to establish the reasons for non-existence or lack of possession – Retention of documents – Principle of good administration

Facts

The General Court (hereinafter “GC”), sitting as grand chamber, upheld the action brought by Ms Matina Stevi, journalist of The New York Times, and by The New York Times Company, and annulled the final decision of the European Commission rejecting Ms Stevi’s request for access to all the text messages exchanged between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, chief executive officer of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, between 1 January 2021 and 11 May 2022, as part of the Commission’s purchase of vaccines from Pfizer in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its decision (hereinafter “the contested decision”), sent to Ms Stevi on 16 November 2022 and adopted in accordance with the detailed rules for the application of Regulation regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents,[1] the Commission stated that, since it did not hold any document corresponding to the description given in the initial application, it was not in a position to grant that application.

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New UNIO issue now online

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By the Editorial Team

The Editorial Board is pleased to announce that a new issue of UNIO – EU Law Journal is now online. Issue 11(1) of UNIO includes contributions from a number of highly regarded academics and young scholars and covers topics such as i) EU’s climate diplomacy in the light of the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement; ii) limitations of legal theory in dealing with informational phenomena and ideal models of Internet regulation; iii) access to the Internet as a central aspect of the exercise of fundamental freedoms and rights; iv) right not to be monitored in an emerging omniotic surveillance society; v) emerging principles from digital constitutionalism in EU law and policy governing digital services  (principle of user empowerment, principle of due process, and principle of transparency); vi) who should hold the status of “controller” (of data) in the courts, centred upon the cases of Portugal and Spain; and vi) CJEU’s Mousse judgment, in which the CJEU reaffirmed that data collection must be objectively indispensable for a specified legal basis, rejecting broad interpretations of contractual necessity and legitimate interest.

It is our hope that this new edition will be of relevance to our readers and would also like to remind you that we are accepting submissions at UNIO and also on our blog.

You may find UNIO’s 11(1) issue here.

Editorial of June 2025

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40 years since Portugal joined the European Union
(or about Constante’s refusal to jump, the dog from José Saramago’s “The Stone Raft”)

Pedro Madeira Froufe [Editor of this blog and Coordinator of the Group “Studies in European Union Law” (CEDU), of JUSGOV – Research Centre for Justice and Governance, University of Minho)]

I

Forty years ago, on 12 June 1985, in the Jerónimos Monastery (Lisbon), the Treaty of Accession of Portugal to the then European Economic Community (EEC) was signed – eight years after Portugal had formally applied for membership. This brings us back to the character named Constante, the dog in the 1986 novel “The Stone Raft” by José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. In this novel, Saramago develops an allegory: the physical, geographical separation of the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of the European continent. In Saramago’s text, this unusual event with no scientific explanation (the separation of the Peninsula) is an allusion to what the author foresaw/feared would happen as part of the unification of Europe: the Iberian countries would be forgotten, cast aside, “sailing adrift”, unable to identify culturally, socially or economically with the rest of Europe. The dog Constante appears at the very beginning of the narrative, hesitating between Spain and France (“the rest of Europe”) as soon as he feels the first crack, and ends up jumping (opting) for the Peninsula, in the process of separation. We shall return to this character, the dog Constante, later in this text.

To begin with, and to give a brief historical overview of Portugal’s pre-accession phase, it was on 28 March 1977 – just after the so-called PREC (“ongoing revolutionary period”) had run its course and only three years after the “Carnation Revolution” (on 25 April 1974) – that the then Portuguese Foreign Minister, José Medeiros Ferreira, sent a letter formally requesting Portugal’s accession to the EEC. In other words, the Portuguese option for European integration was formally recognised as early as 1977.

It is important to remember that around two years earlier, Greece had applied for membership, favouring the direction of European integration at the time (during the 1970s) towards southern Europe. In a way, Greece’s accession in 1981 also signified a reunion of Europe (then “Community”) with its classical mythology. This mythology is at the origin of its name: Europa (Princess Europa and her abduction by a love-struck Zeus…).

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Protecting fundamental rights through the infringement procedure: Advocate General’s Opinion in CJEU Case C-769/22 “Commission v. Hungary”

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Gonçalo Martins de Matos (Master in Judiciary Law by the University of Minho | Member of the Editorial Support of this blog)

There is a very relevant case regarding the defence of fundamental rights being processed at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU): an infringement procedure moved against Hungary by the European Commission on the grounds of breaching Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). It is a relevant case because it is the first case to frame abuses of fundamental rights by Hungarian authorities as an overarching systemic problem, instead of the usual sectorial and solitary breaches. This case might open up the infringement procedure to a valuable role of a fundamental rights protection mechanism,[1] as it has been defended by legal scholars and practitioners. And that role is very important in the context of rule of law backsliding and recent democratic erosion.

Fundamental rights are of elementary importance in the European Union (EU)’s legal order. As a matter of fact, the EU is axiologically based on a set of values ​​common to its Member States, namely respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, enshrined in Article 2 TEU and self-imposed as an objective of the Union itself, according to Article 3(1) TEU. It is this conception of the EU as a community of values ​​that contributes to the construction of the “society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail” referred to in the second part of Article 2 TEU. More than a community of values, the EU creates law to which its legal and institutional framework, its Member States and its citizens are bound, resulting in the notion that the Union submits to the principles that itself created. From this notion we conclude that the EU conceives itself as a Union subjected to the Law, in which the exercise of European public power is linked to EU law. We are in presence of the principle of the rule of law translated into the logic of the EU: the principle of the Union of Law, which functions as a limit to the actions of European institutions and a guarantee of the rights of individuals attributed by European provisions.

Continue reading “Protecting fundamental rights through the infringement procedure: Advocate General’s Opinion in CJEU Case C-769/22 “Commission v. Hungary”” →

Presentation of the Commentary on the Charter of Fundamental Rights given by Judge Nuno Piçarra, published in the JusGov Research Paper Series in the SSRN

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By the Editorial Team 

A Commentary of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union was edited under the scientific coordination of Alessandra Silveira, Larissa Araújo Coelho, Maria Inês Costa and Tiago Sérgio Cabral, with the editorial support of JusGov (Research Centre for Justice and Governance) and the School of Law of the University of Minho.

This scientific outcome was presented at the School of Law, by Judge Nuno Piçarra, on the 29th of November 2024. The intervention of this Judge of the Court of Justice [Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ)] is now published in the JusGov Research Paper Series (access here). The ECJ judge’s presentation is a unique opportunity to understand the importance of this scientific contribution to a thorough understanding of the Charter and its importance in the ECJ’s judicial activity.

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Digitalisation of Justice – feedback is open on the putative Commission’s Communication on a Digital Justice Strategy for 2025-2030

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Joana Covelo de Abreu (Editor of this blog and Key-staff member of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “Digital Citizenship & Technological Sustainability” – CitDig, Erasmus+. Project Assistant of the Jean Monnet Network ENDE)

A feedback period is open from the 26th of May 2025 to the 23rd of June 2025 concerning a call for evidence on a future Commission’s Communication establishing a strategy on Digital Justice for the time span of 2025-2030.

A call for evidence can be used when the European Commission exercises its right of initiative, as it is enshrined under Article 17 (1) of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU). Although it is usually mentioned in the context of the legislative procedure – since, for the most part, the European Commission is the institution with an independent power to bring legislative proposals to the equation –, this institution is entrusted with the task of planning, preparing and proposing all adequate initiatives to promote the general interest of the Union.

In this sense, a call for evidence must be used to define the scope of i) “a politically sensitive and/or important new law or policy”; ii) “an evaluation of an existing law or policy”; and iii) “a fitness check of a bundle of related existing laws and/or policies”.[1] A call for evidence aims at describing the problem that is justifying the Commission’s action, its objectives, while outlining “policy options”. In this particular action, no impact assessment is scheduled, especially since the Commission wants to see whether it will, in the last quarter of 2025, adopt a Communication (i.e., a non-legislative act) focusing on a Digital Justice Strategy for 2025-2030 (DigitalJustice@2023).

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Controversial aspects of the EU-Mercosur agreement (a South American perspective)

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Fernando Mario Milano (Professor of Integration Law at the National University of Rosario and University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

With both blocs concluding negotiations on the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement, it is pertinent to conduct a cursory study on the potential implications of some of the issues linked to the entry into force of its trade pillar, something that, as we will see later, is still far from happening. Of course, this critical analysis should not lead to the interpretation that our position is completely contrary to the provisions of the agreement; it should only serve to highlight those aspects on which there are considerable disagreements between both blocs, which may even render it inapplicable in practice.

As is well known, after 20 years of negotiations, on 28 June 2019, the European Union (“EU”) and Mercosur reached an agreement “in principle” for a “strategic” partnership. This agreement includes not only economic and trade aspects, but also political and cooperation aspects. It consists of three pillars: political dialogue, trade and cooperation.[1]

In view of the disagreements that have arisen between the EU and Mercosur on certain sensitive matters – such as deforestation for agricultural production in the territories of Mercosur countries (particularly in relation to Brazil)[2] – at the request of the EU, an amendment was made to the agreement reached in 2019. In this amendment, in relation to chapter 14 of the trade pillar, a series of parameters to be met for environmental protection were established, in line with the 2015 United Nations (“UN”) Paris Agreement on climate change, duly signed by all Mercosur and EU member countries.[3]

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Portugal’s Social Climate Plan: public consultation has begun

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Nataly Machado (PhD Candidate at the School of Law of the University of Minho, FCT research scholarship holder – 2023.04074.BD) and Cecília Pires (PhD Candidate at the School of Law of the University of Minho, FCT research scholarship holder – 2023.01072.BD)

As part of the Fit for 55 package –  the set of measures adopted by the European Union (EU) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and to enable the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 – the EU Emissions Trading System II (ETS2) was created: a new emissions trading system, separate from the existing EU ETS, which will cover and address CO₂ emissions from fuel combustion in buildings, road transport, and additional sectors.[1]

According to calculations by the European Commission, more than 34 million people in the EU are already affected by energy poverty.[2] In 2023, one fifth of the resident population could not afford to keep their home adequately heated. Across the EU, this proportion reached its peak in Portugal and Spain (20.8%). In 2024, the proportion in Portugal decreased to 15.7%, but remained higher among the at-risk-of-poverty population (30.9%) and the elderly population (22%).[3]

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