Definition
What is a Digital Product Passport?
A Digital Product Passport is a set of data specific to one product, reached electronically through a data carrier on the product, that holds the information the EU requires for that product group. The frame is ESPR (EU) 2024/1781; the first passport in force is the battery passport.
A data set, not a document
The regulation defines the passport by what it contains and how it is reached, not by a format. Its content is the information the delegated act for the product group specifies, drawn from the data categories of Annex III: identifiers, compliance documentation, substances of concern, user information, and the sustainability and circularity attributes the act selects — durability, reparability, recycled content, carbon footprint. It is reached through a data carrier, a QR code or similar, physically present on the product, its packaging or its documentation, and it must stay available for the period the act sets.
How a passport resolves
In practice the identifier is expressed as a GS1 Digital Link address, so one printed code leads to the current passport for as long as the record exists.
- The data carrier on the product encodes a unique product identifier.
- That identifier resolves to the passport: a page and a machine-readable data set, not a PDF.
- Access is layered: some information is public, some reserved for authorities, customs, recyclers or repairers.
- The passport identifier is filed in the EU's central registry before the product is placed on the market (article 13).
Who must provide it
The economic operator placing the product on the EU market: the manufacturer, or the importer and the authorised representative for products made elsewhere (ESPR articles 27 to 35). Distributors and marketplaces must check that the passport exists. Suppliers hand over the data the passport needs; they do not publish it themselves.
When it becomes mandatory
ESPR names no product; each delegated act does, and applies no earlier than 18 months after it enters into force. The Commission's published timeline puts iron and steel first (delegated act in Q4 2026), then textiles, aluminium and tyres (Q3–Q4 2027), furniture (2028) and mattresses (2029). Batteries are ahead of all of them: the battery passport is mandatory from 18 February 2027 under its own regulation.
What a passport is not
Four confusions come up often enough to be worth settling.
- Not a certificate: a passport carries compliance information; it does not grant conformity.
- Not a label: the label is where the data carrier sits; the passport is what the carrier leads to.
- Not a PDF: the texts require machine-readable, interoperable data.
- Not the EU registry: the registry stores identifiers; the passport data lives with the operator or its service provider.
What Listrar does with it
Listrar keeps one canonical record per product and renders the passport from it: a public page at a GS1 Digital Link address, Schema.org JSON-LD for machines, disclosure tiers for authorities, and the evidence behind each field. What that involves has its own page.
Questions this page answers
- Is the Digital Product Passport mandatory today?
- Not yet under ESPR: no product-group delegated act has been adopted, and each applies at least 18 months after it enters into force. The battery passport is the exception, mandatory from 18 February 2027 under Regulation (EU) 2023/1542.
- Does it apply to products made outside the EU?
- Yes, to any product in scope placed on the EU market. The importer or the authorised representative carries the duties a non-EU manufacturer cannot.
- Is a QR code a passport?
- No. The QR code is the data carrier; the passport is the data set it resolves to.
Official sources
Last verified by Listrar: September 22, 2026