The law
How ESPR Article 9 makes a passport a condition of market access
Article 9 bars a covered product from the EU market without a passport. No delegated act covers any product group yet, so it binds nothing.
Article 9 of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) makes a digital product passport a condition of market access. Article 9(1) provides that a covered product may be placed on the market or put into service only if a passport is available. The ESPR is Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, and its text is in the Official Journal.
Article 9 is in force today. It applies to no product, because no product group is covered yet.
Two mistakes follow from a wrong reading. If you treat Article 9 as live, you buy a passport system years early. If you treat it as dead, you miss the day a rule reaches your product group. Article 9 then makes that rule a condition of sale.
Two words decide if Article 9 reaches your product: covered, and available
All of Article 9 depends on those two words. Each one is defined somewhere else in the regulation.
Covered means a delegated act under Article 4 reaches your product group
ESPR creates no passport duty for any specific product. The duty arrives only through a rule for one product group. That rule is a delegated act, and the Commission adopts it under Article 4.
Each delegated act names the product group, lists the data fields, and sets the date. Until an act names your product group, Article 9 does not reach your product. See what is a delegated act.
| Article | What it does |
|---|---|
| Article 4 | Gives the Commission the power to adopt a delegated act for a product group |
| Article 9 | Makes a passport a condition of market access for a covered product |
| Articles 10 and 11 | Carry the essential requirements for the passport |
| Article 13 | Requires the EU registry, which stores at least the unique identifiers |
| Article 15 | Requires the registration identifier to be given to customs |
Available means the data exists, and a reader outside your company can get it
Article 9 sets the condition. Other parts of the regulation say what the passport must be.
Article 10(c) requires the economic operator responsible for the creation of the passport to store it. A digital product passport service provider may store it instead. Recital 41 requires a decentralised data system. So the passport data stays with the operator or with the service provider.
Annex III requires a data carrier and a unique product identifier. Annex III names the ISO/IEC 15459 series. It lists parts 1 to 6 of that series. Article 10(1)(c) makes that an interim rule, until the references of harmonised standards are published.
Warning: available does not mean registered. An operator uploads data to the registry under Article 13(4), and the registry returns a unique registration identifier. Article 13(5) states that the registry's communication "shall not be deemed to be proof of compliance with this Regulation or other Union law".
ESPR names no vendor scheme for this. A search of the full regulation returns no hit for GS1, for Digital Link, for IEC 61406 or for the digital object identifier (DOI). So ESPR does not require a GS1 Digital Link. See identifier schemes.
No product group is covered today, so Article 9 binds nothing
As at 14 August 2026 the Commission has adopted no delegated act for any product group. So Article 9 stops no product at the EU border today.
The published sector years are the years the Commission expects to adopt each act. They are not compliance dates. The earliest possible ESPR passport date is about the middle of 2028, and it belongs to iron and steel. See which products need a passport, and when and how to read the timeline.
Some products never become covered. Article 1(2) excludes food and feed, medicinal products, and living plants and animals. See food and feed are excluded.
Article 9 is the trigger, and it makes the data a condition of sale
Article 9 matters now for one reason. A delegated act lists data fields, and Article 9 converts those fields into a condition of sale for the covered group. Nothing else in ESPR does that job. A covered product with no passport may not go on the market at all. See what happens if you do not comply.
Article 9 applies the first time somebody places a product on the market. It does not apply again on a later resale. See what a distributor or a retailer must do.
Article 15 shows the same effect at the border. It requires the registration identifier to be given to customs. It applies only once the registry is operational, and only to products that an Article 4 delegated act covers.
The registry became operational in July 2026. A database is not a legal act, so do not read "operational" as "in force". A separate instrument governs the registry, and this site has now read all of it. That act creates registration duties, and each one waits for another law to cover the product. See the EU registry.
Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736 does not mention Article 9
The Decision cites standards. It does not create the market access condition. Its legal basis is not ESPR, and it does not mention Article 9 at all.
| Item | What the Decision shows |
|---|---|
| Legal basis | Article 10(6) of Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 on European standardisation |
| Source of the presumption of conformity | ESPR Article 41(2) |
| Requirements the presumption covers | ESPR Articles 10 and 11 |
| ESPR Article 9 | Not mentioned |
So a product built to the cited standards gets a presumption of conformity on the essential requirements, but nothing on the Article 9 condition. The presumption also has no practical effect for a product group until a delegated act requires a passport for that group.
The Decision cites six standards. Count them one by one, because the numbers are not consecutive:
- EN 18216, data exchange protocols
- EN 18219, unique identifiers
- EN 18220, data carriers
- EN 18221, data storage, archiving, and persistence
- EN 18222, application programming interfaces for product passport lifecycle management and searchability
- EN 18223, system interoperability
There is no EN 18217 and no EN 18218. Read the Decision in the Official Journal. See the six standards and presumption of conformity.
The battery passport does not come from Article 9
One passport duty binds already, and ESPR does not create it. Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, the battery regulation, creates it.
Warning: do not read the list below as a rule for large batteries. The light means of transport category 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. See batteries and the legal basis.
Article 77(1) of the battery regulation uses the same trigger words as Article 9(1): placed on the market, or put into service. The duty starts on 18 February 2027. The regulation names these categories, 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
That date does not wait for any delegated act.
Article 9 usually binds your EU importer, and not you
Article 9 binds the operator that places the product on the EU market. Your company usually has no EU establishment. So that operator is usually your EU importer, and not you.
That does not remove your work. The importer cannot supply data that you do not give them. An EU-funded white paper from the PARSEC, CIRPASS-2 and BORDERLINK projects reports that a non-EU manufacturer stays a duty-holder whatever its establishment. Treat that as reported, and not as legal text. See what a non-EU exporter must supply.
Three steps follow.
- Find out if a delegated act covers your product group. Today none does.
- Monitor for the act itself, not for the published adoption year.
- Ask your EU customer which data they need, and when they need it.
A customer request arrives before any law does. If you export merino jumpers, you can get a data request this year, with no delegated act behind it. See what this means for New Zealand exporters.