# Drivers, Barriers and Benefits of the EU Ecolabel in European Companies' Perception
## 4 Discussion  
The market is a key element in companies' perception of and experience with the EU Ecolabel. Market factors such as increased competitiveness and enhanced capabilities to respond to customers? ?/consumers' demands are seen by companies as motivations to apply for the EU Ecolabel, and they are also perceived as real benefits, once the EU Ecolabel is adopted and used as a marketing tool. Nevertheless, the (still limited) market response is also seen by companies as one of the main barriers that they have to tackle. In fact, the demand for Ecolabelled products is deemed as insufficient by companies. To confirm this, a considerable share of respondents to our survey identified that the EU Ecolabel's actual effects in terms of sales are not satisfactory. Thus, the results of our study undoubtedly show that the barriers to the uptake of the EU Ecolabel are still high and that the perceived drivers might be ineffective. The inadequate market response to EU Ecolabel products and services is essentially linked, in the companies' view, to the lack of awareness on the EU Ecolabel by consumers and to the insufficient promotion, inadequate recognition and incentivisation of the EU Ecolabel by public institutions (including national and EU authorities). These two factors emerge repeatedly as the main barriers and shortcomings of the EU Ecolabel, and, prospectively, give important indications on what companies deem necessary for increasing the appeal of the EU Ecolabel: a much stronger and more effective communication and marketing approach to stimulate the market for Ecolabelled products and services. Paragraph 13 of the EU Ecolabel regulation highlights that it is necessary \"to inform the public and to raise public awareness of the EU Ecolabel through promotion actions, information and education campaigns, at local, national and Community levels, in order to make consumers aware of the meaning of the EU Ecolabel and to enable them to make informed choices. It is also necessary in order to make the scheme more attractive to producers and retailers\". Article 12 specifically addresses this objective by requiring an action plan to be developed for this activity. At the moment, a specific communication action plan between Member  
Figure 9: SME (**right**) and Larger Licence holder (**left**) views of the barriers a company may face when considering adoption of the EU Ecolabel. States and the Commission has not been developed yet; however, very few and scattered promotional activities have been implemented to support the requirements under Article 12 of the Regulation, at both Member State and EU levels. Moreover, companies' perception and adoption of the EU Ecolabel can be directly correlated to how complex and cost-effective they consider the scheme to be. The feedback received during our survey highlighted that the Licence fee is not a cost barrier itself. Of greater consideration are the sometimes-significant costs involved in demonstrating compliance with the criteria requirements, and gaining the test results and verifications that are necessary to obtain the label. This emerges as a significant barrier for Licence holders, regardless of their size, as well as for Non-Licence holders and translates also into the consideration that the documentation required for obtaining and maintaining the EU Ecolabel is too much and too complicated. Finally, from the point of view of the License holders, costs are high because of the lack of promotion and support through external incentives, including fiscal ones. Thus, companies see the reduction of market costs via financial incentives as being preferable than reducing the financial administrative costs. The 2006 EVER study already suggested this, as one of the main areas of intervention in order to increase the effectiveness of the EU Ecolabel as a tool to support the creation of a Europe-wide market for green products. The current revised EU Ecolabel Regulation addresses this issue only as far as GPP is concerned.