Public consultation on the draft BEREC Report on empowering end-users through environmental transparency on digital products

During its 57th plenary meeting (from 6th to 8th December 2023), the BEREC Board of Regulators has approved the Draft BEREC Report on empowering end-users through environmental transparency on digital products for public consultation.

BEREC considers end-users’ awareness of environmental issues as critical for end-users’ empowerment and for ICT sustainability. Environmental information on digital products and services could enlighten user choices in terms of their digital consumption. Complementary to effects on the demand side, this data-driven approach of end-users’ empowerment could create positive incentives for digital players to support the deployment of greener digital solutions and limit the risk of greenwashing.

In 2023, BEREC lead a fact-finding process to raise NRAs’ knowledge of existing work and analysis of environmental transparency on ICT sustainability products and end-users’ empowerment. This work took the form of a review of literature and existing EU regulation, a workshop on end-users’ empowerment and ICT sustainability with representatives of the Commission, consulting firms, BEUC and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), and an internal questionnaire on NRAs and other relevant stakeholders’ initiatives.

Main results of this work are presented in the draft Report.

The report consists of 5 chapters:

• Introduction of the topic within the context of BEREC work on environmental sustainability and on end-users empowerment;
• Presentation of the key concepts on empowering end-users through digital products’ information based on the currently valid and newly proposed EU legislation and latest research by public bodies (esp. the EC) and other entities;
• Summary of the main results of the workshop held in cooperation with the Commission, BEUC and EEB;
• Analysis of the responses provided by member NRAs on the activities and initiatives thereof, of OCAs and third parties (NGOs and industry).
• Conclusions and potential areas for future work.

All stakeholders are invited to submit their inputs via EU survey portal no later than 12 February 2024 (17:00 CET).

Contributions should be preferably submitted in English.

In case you are facing any difficulties with the platform, please send your questions and queries to [email protected]. No contributions are accepted on this address.

Please ensure that the overall size of the email (including attachments) is not larger than 2 MB.

We strongly encourage all stakeholders to submit their contributions as early as possible. Contributions received after the above-mentioned deadline will not be taken into account.

All contributions received will be published on the BEREC website, taking into account requests for confidentiality and publication of personal data. Any such requests should clearly indicate which information is considered to be confidential.