German court rules against Eurowings’ adverts for “CO₂ neutral” flying

“An airline that tricks its customers into believing that they can take ‘CO₂-neutral’ flights for a few euros more is acting in a highly misleading manner.”

In December 2024, the German NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH — Environmental Action Germany) won an important legal case against misleading advertising by the airline Eurowings. As a result, Eurowings is no longer allowed to advertise its flights with the statement: “Travel CO₂-neutral. Together we make flying more sustainable: offset CO₂ emissions and take off.”

In March 2024, the Cologne Regional Court had ruled against Eurowings’ misleading advertisements. Eurowings appealed this decision and in December 2024, the Cologne Higher Regional Court rejected the company’s appeal.

In a statement, Jürgen Resch, Federal Managing Director of DUH, comments that,

“An airline that tricks its customers into believing that they can take ‘CO₂-neutral’ flights for a few euros more is acting in a highly misleading manner. With this trickery, Eurowings is trying to distract from the climate damage its business model has to offer. The compensation methods it claimed are nothing more than PR stunts designed to boost sales. This has nothing to do with honest commitment to the environment and climate protection. The court decision is important in order to protect consumers from such misleading information in the future. We demand an immediate stop to blatant greenwashing through consumer deception and instead a real commitment to environmental and climate protection.”

More than 40 legal proceedings

Since May 2022, DUH has taken out more than 40 legal proceedings against companies that were advertising their products with misleading claims of “climate neutrality”. So far, DUH has not lost any of these legal cases.

Eurowings is part of the Lufthansa Group, which also uses carbon offsets to make advertising claims about CO₂ neutrality. DUH describes this as “blatant greenwashing”. In April 2024, DUH filed an injunction against Deutsche Lufthansa AG at the Cologne Regional Court.

DUH took out the case against Eurowings in May 2023 after the company failed to comply with DUH’s requests to submit a cease-and-desist declaration under penalty of law, and to commit to not advertising flights as “climate neutral” or “CO₂ neutral”.

At the political level, DUH is calling on the German government to implement a ban on misleading advertising that suggests that products, companies, or services are “climate neutral” or even “climate positive”.

Agnes Sauter, head of ecological market monitoring at DUH, said in a statement that,

“Consumers have the right to be informed about the basis for the advertised environmental benefits of products. However, more and more companies are creating a positive image for themselves with deceptive advertising promises instead of actually making their products more climate-friendly. Terms such as ‘climate neutral’ or ‘CO₂ neutral’ suggest that consuming a product has no harmful effects on the climate and should be banned entirely. We therefore take a close look at such advertising claims and fight to ensure that consumers can assess whether a product really does what it promises. To this end, it is crucial that companies provide transparent information about compensation projects and the offsetting of residual emissions.”

No guarantee of permanence

Eurowings offered passengers the option of making their flights supposedly “CO₂ neutral” by buying offsets from forest protection and cooking stove projects. DUH criticised cookstove projects because it is difficult or impossible to know exactly how many are actually used by communities. DUH wrote that,

[T]he projects specified are completely unsuitable for compensating for flight emissions and cannot ensure the promised compensation. Forest projects cannot be operated for the same length of time that the CO₂ emitted remains in the atmosphere.

In the Cologne Higher Regional Court’s verdict, DUH’s argument is summed up as follows:

On the one hand, it remains unclear in which specific project the customer is investing, on the other hand, some projects are very limited in time, and it is also unclear what happens after the end of the project period. The certification also does not guarantee permanent CO₂ neutrality.

The Cologne Higher Regional Court upheld the March 2024 verdict of the Regional Court and agreed with DUH’s critique. In its verdict, the Higher Regional Court states that,

The Regional Court considered that the fact that the projects promoted by the defendant predominantly have short durations and in any event do not justify the average consumer’s expectation that the CO₂ neutralisation required over several hundred years could be ensured by these projects constituted a relevant misleading statement.