ESPR (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation)

Its best-known instrument is the digital product passport. As a regulation, the ESPR applies directly in all Member States without a national implementing law.

From directive to regulation: what has changed

The old Ecodesign Directive of 2009 only concerned energy-related products such as washing machines, refrigerators, light sources or electric motors and focused on energy consumption during the use phase. The ESPR extends the scope to practically all physical goods placed on the market or put into service in the EU. Only a few areas are excluded, such as food and feed, medicinal products, living plants and animals, and vehicles, insofar as they are already covered by their own rules.

At the same time, the focus is shifting from energy efficiency to the circular economy. In Article 5, the regulation names the product aspects for which requirements can be set: durability and reliability, reusability, upgradability and repairability, maintenance, the presence of substances of concern, energy and resource efficiency, recycled content, remanufacturing and recycling, carbon and environmental footprint, and expected waste generation. The ESPR is a central building block of the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan.

How the ESPR works: framework plus delegated acts

The regulation itself contains no specific product requirements. It is a framework law that empowers the Commission to adopt a delegated act for each product group. Only this act determines which performance and information requirements apply, whether a digital product passport is mandatory and which data it contains. Under Article 4(4) ESPR, a delegated act may generally only become applicable at the earliest 18 months after its entry into force, so that companies have time to adapt.

The 2025 to 2030 working plan

Which product groups come first is set out in the first ESPR working plan, which the Commission adopted on 16 April 2025. It prioritises iron and steel (act indicatively in 2026), textiles and clothing, tyres and aluminium (2027), furniture (2028) and mattresses (2029). There are also horizontal measures intended to apply across product groups, such as a repairability score for electrical and electronic equipment and requirements for recycled content and recyclability. A mid-term review is planned for 2028. As of October 2026, no product group-specific delegated act on the product passport has yet been adopted; the first are expected in 2027.

The most important instruments of the ESPR

• Ecodesign requirements (Art. 5 to 8): performance requirements such as minimum durability or minimum recycled content, and information requirements such as repair instructions or information on substances of concern.
• Digital product passport (Art. 9 to 15): a machine-readable data set per product, batch or model, accessible via a data carrier with a unique identifier and registered in the Commission's central product passport registry (Art. 13), which has been in operation since 20 July 2026.
• Labelling (Art. 16 to 17): physical labels, for example for repairability or durability classes, which the act can prescribe.
• Ban on destroying unsold consumer products (Art. 24 to 26): transparency obligations on destroyed goods and a direct ban for clothing, accessories and footwear (Annex VII) since 19 July 2026 for large companies and from 19 July 2030 for medium-sized companies; micro and small enterprises are exempt.
• Green public procurement (Art. 65): minimum requirements for products purchased by public contracting authorities.

Obligations of economic operators

The ESPR distributes responsibility along the supply chain. Manufacturers (Art. 27) ensure that their products meet the requirements, draw up the technical documentation and the product passport, register it in the registry and keep the data up to date. Importers (Art. 29) take on these obligations for products from third countries. Dealers (Art. 31) must ensure that customers and potential customers have access to all relevant product information and that prescribed labels are clearly displayed, expressly including in distance selling. Providers of online marketplaces are subject to additional obligations to cooperate with market surveillance. In addition, Article 10(3) obliges manufacturers to provide dealers and marketplaces, on request, with a digital copy of the data carrier or the product identifier free of charge within five working days.

What this means for online shops

For e-commerce, the wording in Article 9 "including in distance selling, before the customer is bound by a contract" is the decisive sentence. As soon as an act prescribes a product passport, it must be accessible on the product page, as a QR code or link, visible before purchase. For this, shops need the unique identifier for each item (GTIN, and for item-level passports also the serial number), a data field for the passport URL and a process that takes over this data from suppliers. How this can be set up in Shopware is described in the article implementing the digital product passport in Shopware.

ESPR timeline

Example: a fashion retailer and the ESPR

A fashion company with more than 250 employees runs an online shop and several branches. Since 19 July 2026, it may no longer destroy unsold clothing and footwear; returns that were previously disposed of must be donated, resold or recycled, and exceptions, for example in the case of hygiene or safety risks, are governed by a delegated regulation of February 2026 and must be documented. At the same time, the company is preparing for the textiles act expected in 2027: it introduces GTINs per variant, negotiates with suppliers on the provision of passport data and reserves space on the product page for the product passport. When the act comes, the changeover is a configuration step, not a project.

The destruction ban in detail

Since 19 July 2026, Article 25 ESPR has prohibited the destruction of unsold clothing, clothing accessories and footwear. Destruction means damaging or discarding products as waste; preparation for reuse, remanufacturing or recycling is not covered. A delegated regulation of the Commission of 9 February 2026 governs the exceptions, for example in the case of health or safety risks, infringements of legislation, infringements of intellectual property rights, irreparable damage or where a donation has demonstrably been refused. Companies must document the use of an exception for five years and prove it at the request of the authorities. In addition, Article 24 obliges companies that destroy unsold consumer products to disclose the quantity, weight and reasons annually.

Distinction from related regulations

The Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 regulates batteries independently and prescribes the battery passport; the ESPR recognises such systems. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) concerns packaging, not the products themselves. The Right to Repair Directive (EU) 2024/1799 creates repair rights for consumers, whereas the ESPR anchors repairability in product design. The Green Claims Directive addresses environmental advertising; the ESPR provides the data with which such claims can be substantiated at all. And energy labelling (the EU energy label) remains a separate instrument.

The digital product passport as the heart of the ESPR

The product passport is the instrument through which the ESPR's information requirements arrive in practice. Under Article 9, products in a regulated group may only be placed on the market with a passport, and the data must be correct, complete and up to date. Article 10 sets out the basic technical rules: linkage via a data carrier with a persistent unique product identifier, open standards, machine readability, interoperability without vendor lock-in, no personal customer data without consent and a back-up copy with an independent third-party service provider. Article 12 governs the identifiers for products, economic operators and production sites, Article 13 the central registry and Article 14 customs checks. The harmonised standards EN 18216 to EN 18223 (data exchange, identifiers, data carriers, storage, interfaces, interoperability) have been listed in the Official Journal since July 2026 and give manufacturers and service providers the technical basis.

Important for classification: the passport is not stored centrally by the EU. The data is held by the manufacturer or a service provider; the registry contains only identifiers and basic data. Which level applies is decided by the act: for batteries it is the individual item, for many other groups probably the model or the batch.

How companies prepare for the ESPR

Because the delegated acts are still pending, the best preparation is a clean data basis. Manufacturers should know what materials their products are made of, where they come from and how they are repaired and recycled, and keep this information in structured form in a PIM or ERP. Retailers should check their product data for unique identifiers and prepare the shop system so that passport links can be stored and displayed for each item. For both, supply contracts should stipulate that product passport data is supplied in machine-readable form.

1. Check whether you are affected: which ranges fall under the working plan, which under the destruction ban?
2. Close data gaps: materials, recycled content, repairability, spare parts, identifiers.
3. Adapt processes: document the handling of unsold goods, add to supplier requirements.
4. Prepare the technology: identification scheme based on GS1 Digital Link, passport hosting or linking, display in the shop.
5. Assign responsibility: who in the company tracks new acts and deadlines?

Frequently asked questions about the ESPR

Does the ESPR already apply?
Yes, the regulation has been in force since 18 July 2024. However, specific product requirements and product passport obligations only arise through the delegated acts for each product group; the destruction ban for textiles has applied since 19 July 2026.

Which products are affected?
In principle, almost all physical goods in the EU single market. The priority groups of the working plan come first: steel, textiles, tyres, aluminium, furniture, mattresses and, via horizontal measures, electrical and electronic equipment.

Does the ESPR also affect small companies?
Yes, the product requirements apply regardless of company size. Only the destruction ban exempts micro and small enterprises and gives medium-sized companies until 2030. The Commission must take the burden on SMEs into account when drawing up the acts.

What happens in the event of infringements?
The market surveillance authorities of the Member States can withdraw non-compliant products from the market; the penalties are set nationally by the Member States and must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.

What is the difference between the ESPR and the digital product passport?
The ESPR is the law; the digital product passport is one of its instruments. Without a delegated act for the respective product group, there is no passport obligation.