Roles
Who checks a digital product passport, and when
A market surveillance authority checks a product on sale. Customs act at the border. A request reaches your European importer first.
Two different authorities check a digital product passport, and they act at two different points. A market surveillance authority acts after the sale starts, and can ask for passport data beyond the part that the public reads. A customs authority acts on import, and its one passport job is to receive a registration identifier.
The two authorities want different evidence. If you prepare for the wrong one, you spend money and still cannot answer the authority that arrives.
Read the customs part before you buy anything. No European rule makes a product carry an ecodesign passport today, so the customs article reaches nothing at all.
Two authorities act at two different points
| Authority | Where it acts | What it looks at | Position as at 15 August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| A customs authority | At the border, on import | The registration identifier for the product | No product group is covered, so there is nothing to send |
| A market surveillance authority | Inside one European Union country | The product, the passport data and the documents | The battery data tier starts on 18 February 2027 |
A market surveillance authority works after the sale starts. It can ask your importer for passport data beyond the part that the public reads.
A customs authority works before the sale starts. Under the ecodesign regulation it has one job on the passport, and that job is to receive a registration identifier from your importer.
A customs authority receives an identifier, and that article reaches no product today
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is the European law that creates the passport. It entered into force on 18 July 2024. Read it in the Official Journal.
Article 15 of that regulation is titled "Customs controls relating to the digital product passport". It requires the registration identifier to reach customs.
Two conditions sit on that article:
- The European Union registry must be operational.
- A delegated act under Article 4 must cover the product.
The first condition is met. The registry became operational in July 2026. No operator must upload to it yet, because no delegated act applies. See the EU registry.
The second condition is met for no product group. The European Commission has adopted no delegated act for any product group. See what is a delegated act and how to read the timeline.
So Article 15 applies to no merino jumper and no steel coil at the border today.
The Commission expects the customs connection about 2029
Warning: one publisher states that year. This site found no second publisher for it. Read it as a Commission plan, and never as a date that binds you.
Article 15 needs a connection between the registry and the customs systems. That connection does not exist yet. The European Commission expects it about 2029, on its own list of frequent questions.
Two footnotes on that list give the same year, and each one starts a period of four years from a different event. This site quotes the footnote that names an article:
The interconnection enabling this automated verification by customs is scheduled to be operational within four years of the relevant implementing act's entry into force, as per Article 15(3) of the Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR).
That footnote starts the four years at the entry into force of the implementing act. The second footnote starts them at the launch of the registry, and it names no article. Both periods end in 2029.
A registration identifier at the border is not proof of compliance
Article 13(4) puts the registry upload on the operator that places the product on the market. The registry answers that upload with a unique registration identifier.
Article 13(5) states that the communication from the registry "shall not be deemed to be proof of compliance with this Regulation or other Union law".
A registration identifier is not a compliance certificate. It shows that a record reached the registry. It says nothing about your test results, your declaration of conformity, or the fibre content of your jumper.
Market surveillance authorities read data the public cannot read
Market surveillance is the work national authorities do on products that are already on the market.
The battery regulation is the only European law with a passport duty today. It sets three access tiers, and it gives a market surveillance authority more data than the public gets. The table below names the article.
The tiers are not nested. The public reads point 1 of Annex XIII only. A market surveillance authority also reads the detailed composition at point 2. That composition covers the cathode, the anode and the electrolyte materials.
Point 3 is the most restricted part of a battery passport. It holds one item, the results of the test reports that prove the battery meets the regulation. Only notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission read it.
Warning: do not publish your test report results on your public product page. The regulation gives them to three named readers, and the general public is not one of them. See who can see what.
That access starts with the passport duty, on 18 February 2027. The duty covers three categories:
- 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
See batteries for the scope in full.
Warning: an LMT battery carries no size threshold. An e-bike battery from Christchurch is covered whatever its capacity.
ESPR sets access tiers for its own passport too. It gives each type of reader a different subset of the data, free of charge. It names market surveillance authorities and customs authorities among those readers.
Two regulations create the checks, and a third requires an EU operator
| Instrument | Provision | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 | Article 15 | Requires the registration identifier to reach customs |
| ESPR | Article 13(4) | Puts the registry upload on the operator that places the product on the market |
| ESPR | Article 13(5) | Returns a registration identifier, and denies that it proves compliance |
| Battery regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 | Article 77(2)(b) | Gives notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission the data at Annex XIII points 2 and 3 |
| Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 | Article 4 | Requires a responsible operator established in the Union, for eighteen named pieces of European Union product law |
A market surveillance rule already reaches your packaging
Food and drink products sit outside ESPR, so no ecodesign passport rule reaches them. See food and feed are excluded. Your packaging is a separate product in European law, and it has its own rule.
Warning: this site has not confirmed the start date of each packaging article. Check the dates for your own packaging before you build a record system.
That rule is Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste. It applies from August 2026, with phased implementation. Article 22 of that rule reaches your records. On request from a market surveillance authority, an operator must identify who supplied the packaging or the packaged products. It must also identify to whom it supplied them. The retention period is five years for single-use packaging and ten years for reusable packaging.
So a market surveillance rule reaches the carton of a New Zealand wine exporter, but no ecodesign passport rule reaches the wine inside it. See packaging.
A responsible operator must exist before either authority acts
Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance and compliance of products carries a rule that comes before all passport work. Article 4 covers eighteen named pieces of European Union product law. A product under any of them needs an economic operator established in the Union. That operator takes responsibility for the Article 4(3) tasks.
If no such operator exists for your product, the goods do not reach the market, and no passport work repairs that. See who is the economic operator.
A request usually reaches your European importer first
Both authorities deal with the operator that places the product on the European Union market. A New Zealand company with no European office is usually not that operator, and the European importer usually is.
So a market surveillance request goes to your importer, and a customs question goes to your importer. Your importer then asks you for the evidence, as a condition of purchase. The first consequence of a missing passport is lost market access. See what happens if you do not comply.
Your importer cannot show a document that you never sent. It cannot answer a question about a fibre or a cell chemistry that only you can answer. See importer obligations and what a non-EU exporter must supply.
Prepare people and documents, not a customs clearance service
- Write down the name of the operator that places your product on the European Union market.
- Name one person on each side who answers a market surveillance request.
- Keep the declaration of conformity and the technical documentation ready to send.
- Do not buy a customs clearance service for passports this year.
- If you sell an LMT battery, prepare the point 2 data before 18 February 2027.
See agreeing data duties with your EU importer for the contract wording, and what this means for New Zealand exporters for the wider position.