Who is liable if the passport data is wrong?

The economic operator that places the battery on the market is liable for wrong data. Article 77(4) of the battery regulation, in force, requires the digital product passport to be accurate, complete and up to date. If you have no EU office, that operator is usually your importer.

That answer does not protect you. Your importer cannot check a fact that only your factory holds, so it makes you promise the fact in the supply agreement. You then pay for an error, and EU law never names you at all.

Warning: one passport duty is law today. It reaches three battery categories from 18 February 2027, and no others:

• each light means of transport (LMT) battery, such as an e-bike battery
• each industrial battery with a capacity greater than 2 kilowatt hours
• each electric vehicle battery

Warning: do not read this as a rule for large batteries. An LMT battery carries no size threshold, so a small e-bike battery is covered. The Commission web page on digital product passports writes "certain types of batteries, including", and that list is open.

Every other battery gets a QR code to other information, not a passport. Read how to read the timeline before you accept any other date.

The law names one liable party, and sets three tests

The EU battery regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, is in force. Article 77(4) says:

The economic operator placing the battery on the market shall ensure that the information in the battery passport is accurate, complete and up to date. It may give written authorisation to any other operator to act on its behalf.

Who is the economic operator covers the first half of that sentence, and this page covers the rest of it.

Accurate, complete and up to date are three separate tests

A passport must pass all three tests.

Take an e-bike battery built in Christchurch. Every stated figure is right, and one required field is blank. That passport is accurate and incomplete, and it fails Article 77(4).

Take the same battery two years later. You change the product, and the passport still describes the first version. It is accurate and complete, and out of date, so it fails again.

Article 77(8) says the passport ceases to exist after the battery has been recycled. Until then, keep each field current. See updating a passport after sale for that part.

Completeness is tested on each item, not on each model

Article 77(3) requires a unique identifier for each battery. So each individual battery carries its own passport, and each one must pass all three tests.

One empty field in a batch record leaves every passport in that batch incomplete. Model-level data does not meet Article 77.

Article 78 sets the technical essential requirements for the battery passport. Point (g) requires data authentication, reliability and integrity. So keep the evidence behind each field, and record who approved it. That point names no method. See verifiable credentials are not required.

Your importer carries the duty and cannot check your answer

This gap decides the commercial outcome for you.

Your importer did not design the product and did not build it. It cannot verify a material composition, a test result or a plant name. It can only repeat what you send.

Article 41(2) tells the importer what to verify before it places a battery on the market:

(a) the EU declaration of conformity and technical documentation referred to in Annex VIII have been drawn up and that the relevant conformity assessment procedure referred to in Article 17 has been carried out by the manufacturer; (b) the battery bears the CE marking referred to in Article 19, and is marked and labelled in accordance with Article 13

Read that list carefully. The importer checks that each item exists, and that the manufacturer drew it up. Only you can state if the content is true.

That list is where your contract demands start. What a non-EU exporter must supply gives each row and names who produces it.

So the importer moves the risk to you through the contract

An importer with a legal duty on data it cannot check has one remedy. It writes the duty into the purchase agreement.

Expect three demands:

• A warranty that the data you supply is accurate and complete.
• A promise to pay the cost of an error in that data.
• A time limit in working days for an update after a product change.

A second EU law has the same effect. Directive (EU) 2024/2853 is adopted. Article 8(1)(c) makes the EU importer liable for a defective product when the manufacturer is outside the Union. It names the authorised representative and the fulfilment service provider as well. The Directive applies to a product placed on the market or put into service after 8 December 2026. See importer obligations.

Note the date. A corrigendum moved the application date by one day, and many pages still carry the old one. The transposition deadline is a different date again.

Written authorisation does not change the position. Article 77(4) lets the responsible operator authorise another operator to act on its behalf, and the responsibility does not move. Article 77(7) is the only transfer route. It covers re-use, repurpose, remanufacture and waste.

So the legal duty stays with your importer. The commercial consequence of a wrong field reaches you through the contract. See how to agree data duties.

A registration in the EU registry proves nothing about your data

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. It came into force on 18 July 2024. The table at the end of this page names the articles that carry the essential passport requirements.

Warning: a registry entry is not proof that your data is right. Article 13(5) of ESPR states that the registry's communication "shall not be deemed to be proof of compliance with this Regulation or other Union law". See the EU registry.

No ESPR passport duty reaches a product yet. That duty starts for a product group only when the European Commission adopts a rule for the group, called a delegated act. The Commission has adopted no such rule, as at 14 August 2026.

A consortium paper reads the duty more widely than the text

The PARSEC, CIRPASS-2 and BORDERLINK projects published a white paper on 31 March 2026. It makes two statements that go further than the wording above:

• A non-EU manufacturer stays a duty holder regardless of establishment.
• The appointment of an authorised representative does not move responsibility away from the manufacturer.

Mark what that document is. It is a paper from EU-funded projects. It is not legal text, and it binds nobody.

Under the wider reading a data error reaches you directly. Ask your importer which reading it holds before you sign.

What this site does not know about the penalty

Warning: do not accept an EU fine figure from a supplier without a primary source. See what happens if you do not comply.

This site does not know what penalties EU member states set for inaccurate passport data, or how they differ between member states. It holds no enforcement record to report. So you negotiate the data warranty in your supply agreement without a penalty figure.

No delegated act applies to any product group. So ESPR creates no passport duty to enforce yet.

The rules this page uses, and their status

Name the operator, and read the data warranty before you sign

1. Name the company that places your product on the EU market.
2. List each passport field, and name the person who owns its source.
3. Set a review date for each field, and hold to that date.
4. Read the data warranty in your supply agreement before you sign it.
5. State the update time as a number of working days.