The European Council confirmed on 13 September its political agreement on a draft regulation aimed at reviewing the EU system for the standard description of fibres and the labelling of textile products. This Council position will now be forwarded to the Parliament for second reading.

The regulation will revise current rules on the use of textile fibre names, labelling, marking and determination of the fibre composition of textile products, with a view to improving the functioning of the internal market and to providing accurate information to consumers.

The new regulation will explicitly state the responsibility of manufacturers and importers in ensuring the supply of the label or marking and the accuracy of the information contained therein when placing a textile product on the market.

Key objectives of the new textile labelling regulation

• Further harmonization of the names of textile fibres and the indications appearing on labels, markings and documents which accompany textile products at the various stages of their production, processing and distribution.
• Ensuring correct information is made available to consumers across the Union. The regulation will not prevent economic operators from indicating, in addition to compulsory rules on composition labelling and marking, the presence of small quantities of fibres requiring particular attention to keep the original quality of the textile product.
• Reducing the administrative burden for national authorities, by allowing a faster adoption of new fibre names to be applied at the same time throughout the EU.
• Laying down methods for the sampling and analysis of textile products that can be turned into European standards.
• Reinforcing legal clarity, by replacing the three existing relevant directives (Directive 73/44/EEC, Directive 96/73/EC and Directive 2008/121/EC, recasted in 2008) by a single legal instrument.