The EU Digital Product Passport Registry is a central register, run by the European Commission, that stores the unique identifiers of digital product passports, not the passports themselves, so authorities and customs can check that a valid passport exists for a product. Article 13 of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) required the Commission to establish it by 19 July 2026.
This page reflects the rules as of 10 July 2026. Regulatory dates are dated and may change, confirm against the current instruments or with qualified advisers.
Under Article 13(1) of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781), the European Commission must set up and maintain a digital registry storing the unique identifiers connected with products that carry a digital product passport. That is the registry's whole job: it records that a passport exists, who is behind it, and where it can be found.
The registry does not hold your material composition, carbon footprint, repair instructions or any of the substance of the passport. That data stays where the economic operator (or its passport service provider) hosts it; the registry holds the identifier and enough reference data to point to it. The architecture is deliberately decentralised: the Commission runs the index, manufacturers run the passports.
This matters practically. Registering a passport will not mean uploading your product data to Brussels. It will mean lodging an identifier so that a market-surveillance authority or a customs officer can confirm the passport is real and reachable.
Article 13 gave the Commission until 19 July 2026 to establish the registry. That is a set-up obligation on the Commission, not a date by which manufacturers must register anything; no product group has a live DPP obligation yet, so there is nothing for most operators to lodge.
As of July 2026, the Commission has been building toward that deadline: a public consultation on the draft implementing regulation for the registry closed on 27 May 2026, and the technical specifications for the registry are still pending adoption. So the legal deadline stands, but the operational detail, how registration actually works, through what interface, with what data fields, is not yet fixed in adopted law. Treat any description of the registration workflow as provisional until the implementing act is adopted.
The registry is not paperwork for its own sake; it is wired into customs. Under the ESPR, a product covered by a DPP delegated act can only be released for free circulation into the EU after customs authorities have verified that the unique registration identifier and the commodity code match what is stored in the registry. That check is designed to happen electronically and automatically, via interconnection with the EU customs systems.
For importers, this is the sharpest edge of the whole DPP regime: once a delegated act applies to your product group, a missing or unregistered passport becomes a border problem, not just a compliance gap. But that edge only exists product group by product group, as delegated acts take effect, batteries first, from 18 February 2027 under Regulation (EU) 2023/1542.
The ESPR anticipates an awkward question: what happens to a passport when the company behind it goes bankrupt, is wound up, or leaves the EU market? A passport that disappears with its issuer would defeat the point of a document meant to last a product's lifetime.
The answer is a backup obligation. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 requires the economic operator placing the product on the market to make a back-up copy of the digital product passport available through a digital product passport service provider, defined in Article 2(32) as an independent third party authorised to process the passport data. If the operator becomes insolvent, liquidates, or ceases activity in the Union, the passport survives with the service provider.
Those service providers will themselves be regulated: the Commission is to set requirements for them, including a certification scheme, so that "independent third party" means something verifiable rather than self-declared.
Three sets of detailed rules have to land before any of this is fully operational, and as of July 2026 none of them is adopted:
The Commission is expected to adopt these in a delegated act (with accompanying implementing acts) in late 2026, alongside the supporting technical standards. Until then, the framework exists in Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, but the plumbing does not.
Because the registry's operational rules and the service-provider certification scheme are not adopted, no software vendor, Passfolia included, can currently offer real registry integration, and no company can currently be a certified DPP service provider. There is nothing adopted to integrate with and no certification scheme to be certified under. A vendor claiming either today is describing something that does not yet exist in law.
What you can do now is prepare the inputs the registry will need: passports with stable unique identifiers, structured data, and an auditable record of what was published when. Passfolia builds passports on GS1 Digital Link identifiers and keeps every record versioned, and tracks the registry and service-provider acts as they move, so when the late-2026 rules are adopted, the gap to close is integration work, not a data rebuild. We will state plainly when registry integration exists and is live; until then, we won't claim it.
No. The 19 July 2026 date is the Commission's deadline to establish the registry, not a deadline for operators. Registration obligations arrive product group by product group as delegated acts take effect, the first being batteries under Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, from 18 February 2027. As of July 2026 there is no product group with a live registration duty.
No. Article 13 of the ESPR makes it a register of unique identifiers and reference information. The passport content, materials, carbon footprint, performance, circularity data, stays on the system the economic operator (or its service provider) chooses. The registry lets authorities confirm a passport exists and find it.
An independent third party, defined in Article 2(32) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, authorised to process passport data on the operator's behalf. The ESPR requires operators to lodge a back-up copy of the passport with such a provider so the passport remains accessible after an insolvency or market exit. The certification scheme for these providers is expected in the late-2026 rules, so no provider is certified yet.
Not truthfully. The implementing rules that define how the registry operates, and the certification scheme for service providers, are not yet adopted as of July 2026. Until they are, "registry integration" and "certified DPP service provider" are claims without an adopted legal or technical basis, from any vendor, including us.
Get the parts that won't change into shape: unique identifiers for your products (GS1 Digital Link is the emerging standard for the passport URL), structured passport data, and a versioned record of what you published and when. Those are the inputs the registry will reference regardless of the final technical detail.
Customs authorities will verify, electronically and automatically, that the unique registration identifier and commodity code you provide match the registry before releasing the product for free circulation, under Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. A product covered by an applicable delegated act without a registered passport can be held at the border.
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