ESPR — Regulation (EU) 2024/1781
- Citation
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1781
- Jurisdiction
- EU
- Made by
- European Commission
- Instrument
- Regulation
- Status
- In force
What it requires (7 obligations)
From 19 July 2026 the destruction of unsold consumer products listed in Annex VII is prohibited. The prohibition does not apply to micro and small enterprises, and reaches medium-sized enterprises only from 19 July 2030. Annex VII lists apparel and clothing accessories by commodity code — 4203, 61, 62, 6504 and 6505 — and footwear under 6401 to 6405.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Products
- Apparel, clothing accessories, footwear
- Markets
- EU
- Entry into force
- 2026-07-19
Annex VII is a commodity-code list and the codes decide, not the word "textiles". Home textiles — bed linen, curtains, towels, CN 63 — are NOT listed, so the prohibition does not reach them. The enterprise-size staging is the other half: for a medium-sized enterprise this is a 2030 duty, and for a micro or small one it is not a duty at all.
Quoted from Article 25(1) with the product list read from Annex VII, CELEX 32024R1781.
An economic operator not caught by the prohibition must not destroy unsold consumer products supplied to it for the purpose of circumventing that prohibition.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Products
- Apparel, clothing accessories, footwear
- Markets
- EU
- Entry into force
- 2026-07-19
This is what stops the exemptions being used as a disposal route: a small enterprise is outside the prohibition but inside this, so stock cannot be moved down the size ladder to be destroyed lawfully. The test is purpose, which makes it a question about arrangements rather than about who holds the goods.
Quoted from Article 25(2).
Economic operators that discard unsold consumer products, directly or on their behalf, must disclose annually: the number and weight discarded per year by product type or category; the reasons for discarding and any derogation relied on; the proportion delivered to preparing for reuse (including refurbishment and remanufacturing), recycling, other recovery including energy recovery, and disposal, in accordance with the waste hierarchy; and the measures taken and planned to prevent destruction of unsold consumer products. The disclosure must be clear, visible and on at least an easily accessible page of the operator's website.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Products
- Apparel, clothing accessories, footwear
- Markets
- EU
The disclosure duty is separate from the prohibition and is triggered by discarding, not by being caught by the ban — so it can bind an operator whose products are not in Annex VII at all. The publication route is prescribed: an easily accessible page of the website, not a figure supplied on request.
Quoted from Article 24(1), points (a) to (d) and the following subparagraph.
Where information requirements so provide, a product may only be placed on the market or put into service if a digital product passport is available in accordance with the applicable delegated acts adopted under Article 4 and with Articles 10 and 11, and the data in that passport must be accurate, complete and up to date.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Products
- Textiles, apparel, footwear
- Markets
- EU
Conditional, and it stays conditional: the duty bites only through a delegated act adopted under Article 4 for a given product group. NO DELEGATED ACT FOR TEXTILES EXISTS, so there is no textile passport requirement in force and no textile field list — anything published as one is a forecast. What is settled is the mechanism and the accuracy standard, not the content.
Quoted from Article 9(1).
The delegated acts establishing a digital product passport for a product group must specify, as appropriate: the data to be included pursuant to Annex III; the data carriers to be used; the layout and positioning of the carrier; whether the passport is at model, batch or item level; how it is made accessible to customers before they are bound by a contract for sale, hire or hire purchase, including in distance selling; which actors have access to which data; and which actors are to create the passport.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Products
- Textiles, apparel, footwear
- Markets
- EU
This is the list of things that are NOT yet decided for textiles, which is more useful to a supplier than a forecast of what will be. Model, batch or item level in particular changes what a manufacturer has to be able to trace, and it is left to the delegated act.
Quoted from Article 9(2), points (a) to (g).
From 19 July 2030 the prohibition on destroying unsold consumer products listed in Annex VII extends to medium-sized enterprises. Until that date it binds neither them nor micro and small enterprises, which the prohibition never reaches.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Size threshold
- Medium-sized enterprises and above
- Products
- Apparel, clothing accessories, footwear
- Markets
- EU
- Entry into force
- 2030-07-19
Held as its own row rather than a sentence inside the 2026 duty, so that a medium-sized enterprise filtering the register finds it and so that the instrument reports partial rather than full legal force. A date four years out is the kind that gets repeated without its marker.
Article 25(1), enterprise-size staging, CELEX 32024R1781. Split from the 2026 obligation on this record, which carried the same staging in its summary and cites the same article; not re-fetched, because EUR-Lex has been answering 202 with an empty body to every route since 2026-08-27.
The Commission plans to adopt the ESPR delegated act setting ecodesign and digital product passport requirements for textiles in the fourth quarter of 2027. Under Article 4(4) its requirements apply no earlier than 18 months after it enters into force, except in duly justified cases.
2027-Q4 Indicative Expected per an official work plan; date not fixed
- Who it falls on
- Economic operators (manufacturer, importer, distributor or responsible person)
- Products
- Textiles, apparel
- Markets
- EU
The date is the planned ADOPTION of the act, not the date a passport is required. On the Commission's indicative plan, and with the 18-month floor in Article 4(4), a textile passport duty could not apply before 2029. The content is not settled: a Joint Research Centre study supports the impact assessment, and the Commission's page states that other actors, notably suppliers of products, may be subject to specific requirements to provide relevant information that is available to them. The digital product passport registry set up under Article 13 by 19 July 2026 stores at least the unique identifiers, not the passport data itself.
European Commission, Digital Product Passport — textile and apparel: "Q4 2027: Planned adoption of the ESPR Delegated Act for textiles" (indicative timeline). Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 Art. 4(4).
This is a register, not advice. It records what an instrument says and when it applies. Whether it applies to a particular company, product or shipment is a question for somebody who knows that business, and the answer is frequently not what the summary above would suggest.
Part of the Digital Product Passport hub — the EU regime, the tools, and what is not settled yet
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