# Drivers, Barriers and Benefits of the EU Ecolabel in European Companies' Perception
## EU Ecolabel Drivers, Benefits and Barriers: Evidence from the EU Ecolabel Evaluation Survey
### Benefits
If we look at the findings regarding the sub-group of licence holding SMEs, results again do not change much as they identify two main areas of payback, namely, enhanced competitiveness of products/services, and improved customers/consumers' satisfaction. Thirdly, respondent SMEs indicate that the improvement of the environmental performance of the company as a benefit delivered through participation in the scheme. As for larger companies, they identify the increased consumer/customer interest and satisfaction as a major benefit of the EU Ecolabel, followed by the improvement of the overall environmental performance of the company. Larger companies also ranked more highly as a payback the improvement of competitiveness on the market. The comparison of these results with the EVER study shows a change in companies' perception of the benefits of the EU Ecolabel. Back in 2006, companies stated that the main benefit brought by the EU Ecolabel was the overall improvement of their environmental performance, while the improvement of the competitive performance (new customers and increased market share) came only secondly. Today, companies see the EU Ecolabel less as a way for reducing their impact on the environment and \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Benefits**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Weighted Mean**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Mann–Whitney U Test**} \\ \cline{2-3}  & **License Holders** & & **Non-Licence Holders** \\ \hline Important Customer’s request & 0.82 & 0.76 & - \\ Increase sales & 0.37 & 0.26 & - \\ Cost savings & 0.33 & 0.26 & - \\ Access to public procurement & 0.72 & 0.71 & - \\ Export opportunities & 0.69 & 0.60 & - \\ Consumers/customers’ satisfaction & 0.90 & 0.92 & - \\ Relations with stakeholders & 0.78 & 0.92 & - \\ Employee commitment & 0.67 & 0.74 & - \\ Management commitment & 0.70 & 0.73 & - \\ Management of specific environmental aspects & 0.75 & 0.76 & - \\ Company environmental Performance & 0.83 & 0.73 & - \\ Organizational capabilities & 0.65 & 0.66 & - \\ Supply chain management & 0.46 & 0.35 & - \\ Product innovation & 0.69 & 0.61 & - \\ Product design & 0.65 & 0.50 & - \\ Access to finance/insurance & 0.20 & 0.07 & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Benefits—License holders and Non-License holders—Mann–Whitney U test. more as a market instrument to take advantage of the opportunities offered by a greening retailing and public procurement environment. This may be linked to the consideration that one of the main objectives of the 2009 revision of the EU Ecolabel Regulation was to reinforce the EU Ecolabel as a label of environmental excellence, increasing uptake by companies whose products and service already have the lowest impacts on the environment. This aspect has been rightly affirmed as central to the revised EU Ecolabel Regulation, where Articles 6.3 and Annex I call for the criteria development and revision process to be centred on life-cycle approach and key environmental aspects. Furthermore, the surveyed companies have stressed that the effectiveness of the EU Ecolabel in terms of improving environmental performance is generally difficult to measure, owing mainly to (1) the very specific nature of the EU Ecolabel and, more precisely, the fact it is a multi-criteria ISO Type I environmental label addressing a wide range of environmental aspects; and (2) difficulties in isolating the environmental benefits achieved due to the EU Ecolabel from the environmental benefits attained by the implementation of other isolated environmental measures, such as energy efficiency measures, chemical substances, environmental management systems, and supply chain management, etc. However, EU Ecolabel service providers (namely hotels) have shown a higher capability of measuring their environmental improvement given that the whole accommodation facility must be addressed when adopting the scheme.