From words to actions, but very slowly, like almost everything that arises from a supranational structure like the European one. In small steps, the Digital Product Passport (DPP, for its initials in English) is taking shape and allowing a glimpse of what it will become when its application is fully realized.
The DPP, regulated under the European Ecodesign Regulation for Sustainable Products (ESPR), is conceived as a tool to gather and facilitate access to relevant information about products throughout their life cycle, from their manufacturing to their use and management at the end of it. The goal is to improve traceability and transparency of value chains and provide information on aspects such as the materials used, product characteristics, or possibilities for repair, reuse, and recycling.
So far, Brussels has already established new provisions on the common infrastructure that will allow the registration of passports and has published the first harmonized standards that define technical aspects of their operation. Although we will have to wait to know the specific requirements for textile products.
European Digital Passport Registry
One of the main recent steps occurred in July with the approval of the Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, which establishes the application modalities of the Digital Product Passport registry provided for by the Ecodesign Regulation. The regulation was adopted by the European Commission on July 16 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union the following day.
The Commission launched this registry on July 20, accompanied by a testing environment, technical documentation, and guidelines to help economic operators familiarize themselves with the process. The Commission itself presents this step as an advance to turn the Digital Passport into an operational tool for companies marketing products in the European market.
The registry will be used for those products for which European regulations establish the obligation to have a Digital Passport. It will be the company responsible for the product, once its identity is verified, that will be in charge of registering the passport in the system. Depending on what the regulation establishes for each category, this registry may correspond to a product model, a batch, or each individual unit.
The registry will allow identifying and verifying passports
This registry is not conceived as a central repository that stores all the information of each product. The model is decentralized: the detailed product data remains under the responsibility of the economic operators, while the registry provides a common infrastructure to identify the passports and certain associated data.
In this system, unique identifiers play a central role. The registry will allow associating the passports with those identifiers and facilitate their consultation and verification. The regulations also establish access mechanisms for economic operators, national authorities, and, when applicable, customs authorities, with different levels of authorization. The architecture also includes authentication mechanisms, access rights management, and information security.
The new technical standards set how the system should function
In parallel to the development of the registry, the Commission has taken another relevant step with the publication of six harmonized standards (two are yet to be published) for Digital Product Passports, which cover different technical elements necessary for the passports to function homogeneously. Among them are data exchange protocols, unique identifiers, data carriers, information storage and archiving, application programming interfaces (APIs), and system interoperability.
The harmonized standards support the requirements that the Ecodesign Regulation establishes in its articles 10 and 11: the first sets the conditions that the Digital Passport itself must meet, such as its linkage to a unique identifier, the use of open and interoperable formats, or the possibility of accessing its data according to the rights established for each product; the second establishes how the system should technically function, including its interoperability and free and easy access for the different actors in the value chain and the competent authorities.
The textile will have to wait for its specific requirements
These advances shift the development of the DPP towards increasingly concrete issues regarding how companies will have to manage the information of their products. The discussion is no longer solely focused on what information a consumer can consult, but also on how products are identified, how data is exchanged between systems, how their interoperability is guaranteed, and how authorities and other authorized actors can verify that information.
In the textile sector, where suppliers of raw materials, manufacturers, distributors, and other operators are involved, the availability and traceability of information will be one of the elements that condition the future implementation of the system.
The European Commission anticipates for the fourth quarter of 2027 the adoption of the delegated act of the Ecodesign Regulation that will establish the specific requirements for textile products.
After the adoption of the delegated acts of the ESPR, economic operators will have a transitional period of at least 18 months before the corresponding requirements become applicable.
What the new framework will imply for textile companies
For the sector, the development of this infrastructure means that a significant part of the preparation for the DPP will have to do with information management. Although the specific requirements for garments are not yet defined, textile companies will have to integrate into a system based on unique identifiers, data exchange, and interoperability between different technological solutions.
With the Digital Product Passport, the quality and availability of its data will acquire increasing weight. The traceability of information throughout the supply chain, the ability to relate data to each product or group of products, and the adaptation of internal systems will be relevant issues when the specific framework for textiles is finalized.