Rome, 24 April 2024 – Eni is pleased to learn of the decision of the Council of State which, after 4 years, rejected the thesis of the Competition and Market Authority (AGCM) according to which Eni had implemented an unfair commercial practice to the detriment of consumers for the campaign advertising of the Eni Diesel+ fuel.
The Council of State in fact fully accepted Eni’s appeal in the proceedings in which the company was condemned to pay a fine of 5 million euros. In 2020, the AGCM contested the valorisation in terms of environmental benefit of the green component consisting of the percentage of HVO (hydrogenated biofuel) mixed in diesel. With the ruling of the Council of State, an affair which caused Eni significant economic and reputational damage comes to an end, confirming unjust accusations of ‘greenwashing’ which are now revealed to be totally unfounded.
The Council of State has definitively ascertained that no unfair commercial practices have been implemented by Eni to the detriment of consumers and that the charges raised at the time by the AGCM are to be considered unfounded, ignoring the principle according to which terms such as green and similar do not can never be associated with products considered, by their nature, not ‘zero impact’ on the environment.
Today it is finally recognized that “there can be no doubt, in principle, about the legitimacy of the use of ‘green’ claims also in relation to products (such as in this case diesel fuel) which are (and remain) to a certain extent polluting but which present, compared to others, a lower impact on the environment”.
Eni has always supported the veracity of the environmental claims of Diesel+ based on documented scientific evidence, defining the 15% HVO component contained in it as green and specifying in relative terms that Diesel+, thanks to this green component, was less polluting than the others fuels sold on the market at that time. And this was true and unequivocal.
The correctness of Eni’s actions is thus affirmed with respect to an accusation that has often been used in a completely unfair and instrumental way to unfoundedly diminish the emission reduction properties of its biofuels, which today are also distributed in pure form, further improving the reduction of climate-changing emissions.
