Reference
The sources this site uses, and how they rank
Every fact here traces to a ranked source, from EU law at the top to industry bodies at the bottom, and six standards stay unread.
Every fact on this site traces to a source, and the sources are ranked. The Official Journal of the European Union ranks first. A company press release is not a source at all.
Read this page before you spend money on anything you read here or anywhere else. Most bad advice on digital product passports comes from a low ranked source quoted as if it were law. The usual result is a plan read as a deadline, and money spent about two years early.
The six groups, in rank order
| Rank | Group | Use it for | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Official Journal of the European Union | The wording, the dates and the scope of a law | Knowing when your own sector is covered |
| 2 | European Commission pages and news | Direction, plans, the registry | Any deadline |
| 3 | European standards bodies | Standard numbers, titles and dates | What a standard requires |
| 4 | New Zealand government | The official New Zealand position | Current European dates |
| 5 | EU-funded consortium papers | How duties fall in practice | Legal authority |
| 6 | Industry bodies | What companies build today | Any legal claim |
Commentary ranks below all six groups: consultancies, law firms, vendor pages and practitioner posts. Commentary shows what implementers do. It never supports a legal claim on its own.
The Official Journal outranks everything else
Three instruments carry most of the law on this site.
| Instrument | Status | Read it |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation | In force 18 July 2024 | eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1781/oj |
| Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, the battery regulation | In force, and its passport duty applies from 18 February 2027 | eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1542/oj/eng |
| Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736 | Adopted 14 July 2026, in force 15 July 2026 | data.europa.eu/eli/dec_impl/2026/1736/oj |
Open any of the three and check this site against it.
The verbatim text on this site comes from the EU Publications Office copy of the same Official Journal expression. That copy answers 404 for an identifier that is not real, so it can prove an address. The addresses above work in a browser.
EUR-Lex answers an automated request in more than one way. On 15 August 2026 it served an act to an automated client, and it answered a bot challenge for other addresses. This site records the date and the result. It states no rule about which clients EUR-Lex serves.
Vendor pages name GS1 Digital Link, and the regulation names ISO/IEC 15459
A vendor page can state that the ecodesign regulation requires a QR code to carry a GS1 Digital Link address. A search of the full regulation finds no mention of GS1, and none of Digital Link.
Annex III of the regulation names the ISO/IEC 15459 series instead. Only the legal text shows that such a page is wrong. See identifier schemes: what is verified.
Commission material gives plans, and no deadlines
The European Commission publishes an indicative adoption timeline. It covers iron and steel, textiles, aluminium, tyres, furniture and information and communication technology products.
Those years are the years the Commission expects to adopt each delegated act. The Commission page calls each one a planned adoption, and it says the timelines may change. The Commission has adopted no delegated act for any product group. Read the years for direction only. See how to read the timeline and what is a delegated act.
The Commission also runs the passport registry. Two dates appear in the sources, and both of them are correct.
| Date | What it is |
|---|---|
| 19 July 2026 | The deadline in Article 13(1) of the ecodesign regulation |
| 20 July 2026 | The launch, with a testing environment |
This site calls the registry operational, and never in force. A database is not a legal act. The registry has its own implementing regulation, which is a separate instrument from the Decision above. Commission news items are official, and they are still not law.
Where Commission wording is loose, this site says so. Two wordings on the battery scope are loose, and they sit in two different Commission documents.
| The loose wording | Where this site read it |
|---|---|
| "large batteries" | A Commission news item of 20 July 2026 |
| "certain types of batteries, including" | The Commission web page on digital product passports |
Article 77(1) of the battery regulation names 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
If you read "large", you can incorrectly decide that the duty does not reach you. The word "including" leaves the list open, and the article closes it. Name the three categories. See batteries.
The standards bodies name the standards, and sell the text
The joint technical committee CEN/CLC/JTC 24 wrote the passport standards. DIN holds its secretariat. The work runs under Standardisation Request M/604.
| Standard | Subject | Status |
|---|---|---|
| EN 18216 | Data exchange protocols | Published late May 2026, and cited |
| EN 18219 | Unique identifiers | Published late May 2026, and cited |
| EN 18220 | Data carriers | Published late May 2026, and cited |
| EN 18221 | Data storage, archiving, and persistence | Published late May 2026, and cited |
| EN 18222 | Application programming interfaces for product passport lifecycle management and searchability | Published late May 2026, and cited |
| EN 18223 | System interoperability | Published late May 2026, and cited |
| prEN 18239 | Access rights | Draft, under approval |
| prEN 18246 | Data authentication | Draft, under approval |
The six subjects come from the titles in the Decision. The two draft subjects come from CEN and CENELEC. The British Standards Institution catalogue dates all six standards 28 May 2026.
Never write the six as a range. EN 18217 and EN 18218 are not passport standards, and a range invents them.
A citation gives a presumption of conformity to a product that is built to the standard. The standard itself stays voluntary. The two drafts are not cited, so they give no presumption. CEN and CENELEC still show both as under approval.
This site has not read the six standards
Each text costs between 190 and 370 euros on the distributor listings. Nobody here has bought one. So the normative content of all six is unverified on this site.
Four consequences follow.
- This site gives standard numbers, titles and dates, from the Decision.
- This site does not state what any standard requires.
- A title is not a scope statement. The subjects above come from titles.
- A distributor listing is promotional copy, not a scope statement.
One claim in wide circulation says that EN 18219 permits a fixed number of product identifier schemes, and that it names GS1 Digital Link. That claim appears only in commentary, and nobody has checked it against the standard. This site does not publish it. See why the standard texts are paywalled and which standards apply.
New Zealand government material is thin, and one report carries it
This site searched for New Zealand material on 16 August 2026, in fifteen separate searches, and read 104 separate pages. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote the substantial government account, in a market report of October 2025. See what New Zealand agencies have said.
This site cites that report on every New Zealand page.
This site got the New Zealand picture wrong before that search, on eighteen pages. See how this site got New Zealand wrong.
EU Circular Economy: Ecodesign, Digital Product Passports, and Green Public Procurement
Read it for the advice a New Zealand agency gives an exporter. Do not read its year by year list as a set of deadlines. Those years are adoption years.
Everything else in New Zealand is adjacent, and one page is out of date. Two pages from the same ministry give different export figures over different periods. This site quotes one figure and names its period. See what New Zealand agencies have said.
Consortium papers describe practice, and bind nobody
CIRPASS-2 is an innovation project funded by the European Commission. It has 49 partners, and it names 13 lighthouse pilots.
A white paper of 31 March 2026 came from PARSEC, CIRPASS-2 and BORDERLINK. It states who holds the duty when a non-EU manufacturer sells into the EU market. This site uses it and marks it as a consortium paper. See what a non-EU exporter must supply.
No pilot has published a cost or a benefit figure
CIRPASS-2 claims feasibility and interoperability across its pilots. It publishes no cost, no time, no error rate and no benefit figure. No other published pilot does either. So this site cannot tell you what a passport costs to build or to run. See what a passport costs.
The figures in circulation measure something else. GS1 UK reports less food waste and better store productivity at Woolworths Australia. That result comes from 2D barcodes that carry batch and date data. No passport was involved. Two further GS1 UK figures, on exporter readiness and on export value at risk, carry no sample size, date or method.
Industry bodies show what implementers build
GS1 is a standards body, and so is GS1 New Zealand. Cite either one for what a standard does. Do not cite either one for what the law requires.
Webinars and trade body slides show what companies plan to build. They are not authority for a date. Where an industry source disagrees with the legal text, the legal text governs, and this site records the disagreement.
One disagreement is open, on the delegated act for passport service providers.
| Source | Expects adoption |
|---|---|
| Commission timeline slide, June 2026 | First quarter of 2027 |
| GS1 webinar, 5 May 2026 | End of 2026 |
Both readings appear on this site, and both carry their attribution.
A press release is never a source
When a claim rests on a company announcement, this site finds the primary document underneath it and cites that document. If no primary document exists, the claim does not go up.
LinkedIn commentary is not cited at all. The research environment could not reach the site, so no post was read. A missing citation is better than a paraphrase of something that nobody opened.
Every URL is fetched before it goes up
An early draft cited an address at GS1 New Zealand, for an article about export passports. The publisher was right and the claim was reasonable. The address did not resolve to that article. Somebody had built the address from a pattern.
A fabricated citation is the one error a reader can catch by clicking. If a reader catches one, they will doubt every other claim on the page. So a URL appears on this site only after a person has opened it.
The same rule covers article numbers, standard numbers, regulation numbers and dates. This site copies each one from the source. It never rebuilds one from a pattern.
Four things this site does not know
Silence here is a gap, so do not read it as certainty.
- The contents of the six standards. The texts are paywalled and unread.
- What a passport costs. No published figure exists.
- What the registry semantic repository holds. The act requires it, and this site did not fetch it.
- What any New Zealand agency will do next. None has published since October 2025.
Each gap says what was searched and what came back. See what this site does not know.
Check the status word, the type of date and the rank of the source
Three checks, in order.
- Find the status word: in force, adopted, operational, planned or draft.
- Ask if the date is an adoption date or an application date.
- Check the rank of the source against the table at the top.
A term you do not recognise is in the glossary. A date you want to place is in the timeline. Every page here is listed in the document index.
The company that publishes this site sells product identity software
A New Zealand company, OwlQR, builds this site and sells product identity software. Check the sources named above. Do not trust a page because of who wrote it.
Where the legal text disagrees with a supplier, including that one, the legal text governs.