Sectors and timing
Furniture and mattresses: no EU passport rule exists yet
The Commission plans to adopt a rule in 2028, so a furniture passport applies in late 2029 at the earliest. No published study stands behind that year.
No item of furniture and no mattress needs a digital product passport today. The European Commission has adopted no rule for the group. Such a rule applies in late 2029 at the earliest.
You may sell a solid timber chair, a wool upholstered sofa, a bed base or a natural latex mattress into the European Union (EU). Nothing in EU law asks you for a passport for any of them.
Two mistakes cost money here. The first is to buy a passport system against the year 2028, which is not a deadline. The second is to treat that year as firm. No published study stands behind it, and the furniture date is less certain than the steel date and the textile date.
Nothing binds today, because the rule does not exist
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) creates the passport. It is Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. It has been in force since 18 July 2024.
ESPR by itself creates a passport duty for no product. Article 9 makes a passport a condition of market access, and only for a product group that a separate rule covers. That separate rule is a delegated act, and the Commission adopts one group at a time. See what is a delegated act.
As at 14 August 2026 the Commission has adopted no delegated act for any product group. So no chair, no sofa and no mattress carries an ESPR passport duty. See which products need a passport, and when.
GS1 in Europe, a standards body, publishes the ESPR list of priority product categories. That summary names "furniture, including mattresses". It attributes the list to Article 18(5), and this site has not read that article in the Official Journal. A priority category is a candidate for a rule. See ESPR priority categories.
The published years are the years the rule gets written
Three readings give furniture a year. Each one gives the year of adoption, not the year of compliance.
| Source | Year | What the year is |
|---|---|---|
| Commission indicative timeline | 2028 | Planned adoption of the furniture act |
| The Commission web page, read in August 2026 | Furniture 2028, and mattresses 2029 | Two planned acts, adopted apart |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, October 2025 | Furniture 2028, mattresses 2029 | Adoption years, not mandatory dates |
The first two rows come from the same publisher, so they are one source and not two. The report in the third row carries the substantial New Zealand government account. Its per-category timeline is a list of adoption years. See what New Zealand agencies have said.
The arithmetic puts a furniture passport in 2029 or 2030
Read the table as arithmetic, not as a promise. Only the first row is a plan. The rows below it come from articles of ESPR that are in force.
| Step | Time | Source and status |
|---|---|---|
| The Commission adopts the furniture act | 2028 | Commission timeline, indicative |
| Parliament and Council may object | Two months, extendable by two more | ESPR Article 72(6), in force |
| The act enters into force | 20 days | Usual interval |
| Companies prepare | At least 18 months | ESPR Article 4(4), in force |
| A furniture passport applies | Late 2029 at the earliest, and 2030 if the act comes late in 2028 | Calculated |
Article 4(4) says the date of application "shall not be earlier than 18 months from its entry into force". The same article allows an earlier date in duly justified cases. So treat that period as the usual minimum and not as a hard floor.
The Commission publishes no quarter for furniture. The last row of the table above gives both outcomes. See how to read the timeline.
No study is published for furniture, so the year can move
The published years do not all carry the same weight. The table below gives the public evidence behind three of them.
| Product group | Public preparatory evidence | Indicative adoption |
|---|---|---|
| Iron and steel | Two Commission consultations closed on 12 August 2026 | Q4 2026 |
| Textiles | A preparatory study runs, and its milestone on passport elements is unpublished | Q3 to Q4 2027 |
| Furniture | None found | 2028 |
No preparatory study milestone for furniture is published. The 2028 year rests on the working plan alone. Tyres and aluminium have no published study either.
A year with no published study behind it can move. So you cannot yet fix a date for a furniture rule. See iron and steel and textiles.
The Commission now plans a separate mattress act in 2029
If you sell a mattress, two published readings give you two different years. No adopted text settles either one.
The priority list treats mattresses as part of furniture. The New Zealand report gives mattresses their own later year. On that second reading, and on the same arithmetic, a mattress passport applies about one year after a furniture passport.
The Commission web page now supports the second reading. Its timeline gives furniture one delegated act in 2028, and it gives mattresses a separate delegated act in 2029. One publisher states that, and it marks the timeline as indicative.
A delegated act sets its own scope when somebody writes it. No act exists for either group today. So monitor the furniture work and the mattress work if you sell a natural latex mattress.
Nobody can tell you which data a furniture passport will carry
No act exists, so no data fields exist. Any field list you are shown for a sofa or a bed base today is a forecast with no legal status.
Three points around the data are settled.
- Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736 cites six passport standards.
- Citation gives a product built to a standard a presumption of conformity. The standards stay voluntary. See the six standards.
- ESPR names the ISO/IEC 15459 series for the identifier and the data carrier. It does not name GS1 Digital Link. See identifier schemes: what is verified.
Warning: the six numbers are not consecutive. There is no EN 18217 and no EN 18218. Do not write the six standards as a range.
The table below names the six cited standards.
| Standard | Subject |
|---|---|
| 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 |
The EU deforestation rule already reaches a timber chair
Warning: check the deforestation regulation now, because it covers wood today.
The EU deforestation regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, covers wood. Its Article 4 and Article 9 require a due diligence statement before a covered product goes on the EU market. The statement carries the geolocation of each plot of land where the wood was produced.
Article 9(1) also requires a description of the product. For a product that contains wood, the description gives the common name and the full scientific name of each species.
Check if your chair, bed base or cabinet sits in the covered product list of that regulation. This site has not read that list. Construction products take a passport duty from their own regulation, not from ESPR. See construction products.
The duty falls on the operator that places the furniture on the EU market
ESPR puts the duty on the economic operator that places the product on the market or puts it into service. A New Zealand company usually has no EU office, so that operator is usually the EU importer. See who is the economic operator.
That does not release you. An EU-funded consortium paper of March 2026 states that a non-EU manufacturer stays a duty-holder, whatever its place of establishment. Your importer also cannot publish data that you never sent it. Agree in writing who supplies each item, who approves it, and who updates it after a change. See what a non-EU exporter must supply.
Monitor the iron and steel act, because it comes first
The Commission plans the steel act as the first delegated act under ESPR. No delegated act is adopted yet. If the Commission adopts the steel act, that act becomes the first worked example of an ESPR passport. It should then answer four questions that no summary answers today.
- How the Commission draws the boundary of a product group.
- Which data the Commission demands, and at what level of detail.
- How long the transition period runs for a first act.
- How an act treats a supplier outside the EU.
Each answer tells you what a furniture act may demand.
Do not buy a furniture passport system this year
- Do not buy a furniture passport system this year. No rule defines the data.
- Monitor for the steel act. The Commission plans to adopt it first.
- Ask your EU importer which product data it needs, and when.
- Check the deforestation rule if your product contains wood.
- Find out where you keep your product data, and who owns each field.
Do the last point this year, because you can do it before any rule exists. See what this means for New Zealand exporters.