In what way does it differ from a standard?
Although it refers to standards, regarding fitness-for-use specifications in particular, the EU Eco-label is not itself a standard. It is specifically geared to accounting for environmental impacts at every stage of a product's life cycle, i.e. to integrating a set of criteria that largely exceed the scope of the technical specifications laid down in standards in order to facilitate economic exchanges.
Moreover, the EU Eco-label consists of guidelines that are always subject to a third-party certification process, while there are several standards that do not require any form of certification.
This explains why the EU Eco-label constitutes a set of guidelines that outclass standards in terms of the requirements involved.
