From Promise to Compliance: the Evolving Legal Architecture of EU Sustainability Labels and Their Implications for Sustainable Tourism Governance

Sustainability labels have long been deployed as flexible regulatory instruments intended to shape market behavior through incentives rather than command-and-control obligations. In the context of sustainable tourism, particularly in European destinations facing persistent sustainability pressures, such labels are often promoted as voluntary mechanisms capable of nudging operators toward more responsible practices while avoiding direct regulatory conflict. Recent EU interventions, however, can be argued to disrupt this model. Amendments to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the forthcoming Green Claims Directive introduce stringent requirements for substantiating environmental claims, responding to widespread concerns about greenwashing and the unchecked proliferation of labels and implicit sustainability claims, increasingly employed by market actors. These developments mark a shift in the legal architecture governing sustainability communication, with implications for the role sustainability labels can realistically play in advancing the sustainability of tourism. Using a scoping literature review and doctrinal analysis, this paper examines how this tightening of EU-level scrutiny affects the regulatory potential of sustainability labels as tools for sustainable tourism governance. It investigates whether enhanced verification standards strengthen sustainability labels as trustworthy mechanisms capable of supporting sustainability transitions, or whether the movement toward more command-and-control oversight dilutes their function as incentive-based instruments that previously offered flexibility to authorities and operators committed to sustainable tourism. Rather than resolving the tension, the paper explores the evolving equilibrium between necessary control to counter greenwashing and the risk of over-legalisation that may limit innovation in sustainability labelling. The aim is to assess the conditions under which sustainability labels, situated within the EU’s shifting regulatory landscape, may contribute meaningfully to strategies aimed at advancing sustainable tourism in Europe.