Regulation (EU) 2024/1781
ESPR — Ecodesign for Sustainable Products
SupportedA Listrar record holds fields for this text's requirements.
Listrar summary
ESPR is the frame the rest of the decade hangs on. It replaces the old Ecodesign Directive and lets the Commission set product-by-product rules — durability, repairability, recycled content — through delegated acts, and it invents the Digital Product Passport: a machine-readable record that will ride along with most physical goods sold in the EU. The regulation itself names no products. The delegated acts do, group by group — textiles and furniture are in the first working plan, and none has its act yet — which is why a registry has to be able to absorb new fields without re-platforming.
Who does it apply to?
- Manufacturers placing physical goods on the EU market, wherever they produce
- Importers and distributors of those goods
- Dealers, including online sellers
- Fulfilment service providers
- Online marketplaces and search engines (art. 35)
Main obligations
- Meet the ecodesign requirements the delegated act for your product group sets (art. 6-8)
- Carry a Digital Product Passport once your group's act applies, with the data model, identifiers and access rules of arts. 9-11
- Register the passport identifier in the Commission's central registry before placing the product on the market (art. 13)
- Large companies: stop destroying unsold apparel and footwear (art. 25) and disclose discarded volumes (art. 24)
- Answer market-surveillance and customs checks that verify a passport exists and resolves (art. 15)
Key dates
- 13 June 2024
- Adopted
- 18 July 2024
- In force
- 16 April 2025
- First working plan: textiles, furniture, tyres, mattresses, iron & steel, aluminium
- 9 February 2026
- First ESPR delegated act adopted: (EU) 2026/296, derogations from the destruction ban, applying from 19 July 2026. Still no product-group act.
- 19 July 2026
- Destruction ban on unsold textiles and footwear — in force for large companies (medium-sized: 2030)
- 20 July 2026
- EU DPP registry operational — Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778 of 16 July 2026, in force 6 August 2026
- Q4 2026
- Iron & steel: first product-group delegated act on the Commission's timeline (public consultation closed 12 August 2026)
- Q3–Q4 2027 → 2029
- Commission timeline: textiles, aluminium and tyres (Q3–Q4 2027), furniture (2028), mattresses (2029) — each act applies no earlier than 18 months after entry into force
Products in scope
- Nearly all physical goods placed on the EU market — the scope is 'any physical good', carved back by exceptions
- First wave (2025 working plan): textiles and apparel, furniture, tyres, mattresses, iron & steel, aluminium
- Out of scope: food, feed, medicinal products, living organisms, and vehicles covered by their own type-approval rules
Obligations by actor
- Manufacturer
- Design to the delegated act, create and maintain the passport, register its identifier, keep technical documentation (art. 27)
- Importer
- Verify the passport exists and is correct before the product crosses the border (art. 29)
- Distributor
- Check the passport link is present before making the product available (art. 30)
- Dealer
- Make the passport accessible to customers at the point of sale, including online (art. 31)
- Marketplace
- Ensure listings carry the passport reference their product group requires (art. 35)
Documents and evidence to keep
- Technical documentation behind every declared attribute, kept for the delegated act's retention period
- The passport data itself, live at a resolvable address for the product's lifetime
- Registration proof from the EU passport registry
- For large companies: records of unsold goods and what happened to them
Sanctions and risks
- Penalties are set by each Member State — effective, proportionate, dissuasive is the floor, not the ceiling (art. 74)
- Non-compliant products can be withdrawn from the market or refused at customs (art. 15)
- A product whose passport does not resolve is, once its delegated act applies, a product that cannot legally be sold
Key articles
- Art. 9-11 — the Digital Product Passport: what it is, what it contains, how it must work technically
- Art. 13 — the central DPP registry every passport identifier must be filed in
- Art. 25 — the ban on destroying unsold consumer products (Annex VII: apparel and footwear first)
- Art. 27-35 — obligations of manufacturers, importers, distributors, dealers and marketplaces
- Art. 74 — penalties
Official text
Last verified by Listrar: September 22, 2026