Why the duty lands on the importer
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation follows the logic of EU product law generally: obligations attach to the economic operator who places a product on the Union market. For goods made outside the EU, that is the importer, or an authorised representative appointed by the manufacturer.
The practical consequence is asymmetric. You carry the legal exposure for a document whose contents describe dyeing baths, alloy compositions and cell chemistries that occurred in someone else's facility. The regulation does not consider that unfair — it assumes you will secure the data contractually before you buy.
What you actually have to verify
Verification is not a signature exercise. Before goods are placed on the market, the passport has to exist, the data carrier has to be on the product, and the identifiers behind it have to be registered in the EU's central DPP registry. A missing registration is not a paperwork detail; it is the difference between a product that can legally be sold and one that cannot.
- The passport resolves — scanning the code actually reaches a working passport, not a dead link
- The identifiers are registered before placement, not after the container arrives
- Restricted fields are properly tiered, so customs and surveillance see what they are entitled to
- The data matches the goods — a passport describing last season's composition is worse than none
That last point is the one that catches importers. A supplier who publishes a passport once and never updates it hands you a document that becomes inaccurate the first time a material substitution happens on their line.
When a supplier cannot supply the data
This is the common case, not the exception, and it has three realistic answers. You can help the supplier produce it, which is slow but preserves the relationship and the price. You can create the passport yourself from data you collect and evidence you hold, which is faster and keeps control where the liability already sits. Or you can change supplier, which is the honest option when a factory shows no intention of engaging.
Most importers end up doing the second for existing lines and the first for strategic ones. What does not work is waiting: the data does not improve on its own, and the first deadline that matters is fixed.
Building verification into buying, not after it
The importers who will find this manageable are the ones who move the requirement into the purchase agreement rather than the receiving dock. That means data clauses in new contracts, a per-SKU record you maintain regardless of supplier cooperation, and a check that happens before shipment rather than at the border.
It also means treating the passport as part of goods-in quality control. A product that arrives with a code that does not resolve is a defect, and it is far cheaper to find it before the container leaves than after it has been distributed to customers.
The batteries deadline is your rehearsal
If you import batteries above 2 kWh, February 2027 is a hard date and your project has already started. If you do not, it is still the most useful thing to watch: it is the first real test of the EU registry, of customs handling passport identifiers, and of whether the 2026 standards hold up under load.
Whatever breaks in batteries in early 2027 will shape how enforcement works for textiles, steel and everything after. Importers who follow that closely will spend their own preparation budget far more accurately than those who wait for their category's act.
Questions importers ask
Can we make the supplier legally responsible instead?
Contractually you can allocate cost and require data, and you should. But the regulation addresses the operator placing the product on the market; an authority will approach you, and a contract with a factory abroad does not change who receives the enforcement letter.
What if we only distribute, not import?
Distributors carry verification duties rather than creation duties. You are expected to check that a product you make available carries a valid passport — which in practice means the same verification workflow, without the obligation to produce the data yourself.
Do we need our own resolver domain?
If you create passports for products whose supplier does not, yes — the address is printed on packaging and must keep resolving for the life of the product. If your suppliers publish their own, you need assurance that theirs will persist, which is what EN 18221 is about.