Every textile placed on the EU market will need a Digital Product Passport.
The EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation establishes a machine-readable, verifiable record of composition, origin, durability and lifecycle for textiles. The framework is already law. The textile requirements are being written now.
The framework regulation that mandates the textile passport.
Active regulationEU-funded DPP pilot programme—ARRETIA is a member of its Community of Practice.
MemberThe leading QR standard for resolving passports.
ImplementedAccess and portability rights for product data—in force since 2025.
Applies 2025Textiles are entering a mandatory transparency era.
The forces converging on textiles are not incremental—they are structural. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) entered into force in July 2024 as the framework that will require a Digital Product Passport for every textile placed on the EU market. The specific requirements are being written now, product group by product group, through delegated acts—with textiles among the Commission's first priorities.
Yet no shared infrastructure exists to connect the actors who each hold a fragment of a garment's record—the mill that spun the fibre, the factory that cut it, the platform reselling it years later, the recycler deciding what can be recovered. The architecture that would make lifecycle truth possible does not yet exist.
ARRETIA is a member of the CIRPASS-2 Community of Practice—the EU-funded Digital Product Passport pilot programme (2024–2027).
Three structural failures no point solution can fix.
Data opacity across the chain
Tier 1 supplier data is increasingly available. Tiers 2, 3 and 4—where most of a garment's footprint and composition truth lives—remain inaccessible, unverified, or incompatible across standards. Without a shared data layer, full lifecycle traceability is structurally impossible.
Regulatory fragmentation
ESPR, textile EPR, EU anti-greenwashing rules and data-portability obligations arrive without a unified data architecture. Each new regulation adds reporting burden without adding systemic intelligence. Compliance multiplies faster than the infrastructure to meet it.
A circular economy without memory
Mandatory textile EPR now rewards durability and recyclability—yet resale platforms, repair services and recyclers still operate without the product data that would let them act on it. Every garment that enters its afterlife carries no history. The circular economy the law now requires cannot function without product memory—and product memory requires infrastructure.
The regulation is fixed. The infrastructure is still being decided.
Partner with usThe textile regulation wave has already begun.
Not a single deadline, but a sequence—collection, producer responsibility, and the passport itself—already moving from proposal into force.
- Jan 2025In force
Separate textile collection, EU-wide
Every Member State must collect textiles separately from other waste streams—the first piece of the circular system to become a legal obligation.
Waste Framework Directive · Art. 11 - 16 Oct 2025Directive in force
Mandatory textile EPR across the EU
The revised Waste Framework Directive makes Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles and footwear mandatory in every Member State—fees eco-modulated on durability and recyclability. Schemes operational by 2028.
Directive (EU) 2025/1892 - 27 May 2026Published
The DPP standards are published
CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 published the six standards that give the passport its technical shape: EN 18216 (data exchange), EN 18219 (identifiers), EN 18220 (data carriers), EN 18221 (storage), EN 18222 (APIs) and EN 18223 (system interoperability). Interoperability claims can now be tested against something.
CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 - 6 Jul 2026In force
The EU DPP Registry enters into force
The Registry Implementing Act creates the central register every passport must be recorded in; the registry is operational from 20 July. It also carries the Art. 6a transfer of responsibility to a new responsible economic operator, and gives Member States until February 2027 to designate their national administrators.
Regulation (EU) 2026/1778 - 19 Jul 2026In force
Destroying unsold textiles becomes illegal
Large enterprises may no longer destroy unsold apparel and footwear. The obligation is self-executing—it needs no delegated act. Medium enterprises follow in 2030.
ESPR · Art. 25 - Jan 2027Indicative
Spain: affiliation to a SCRAP
Under the draft Spanish Real Decreto on textiles and footwear, producers must be affiliated to a collective scheme (SCRAP) by January 2027 and begin paying that year—closer than any EU-level date on this timeline. The Real Decreto was notified to TRIS and is not yet approved.
Draft Real Decreto (Spain) · notified to TRIS - ~2027Indicative
Textile Digital Product Passport—delegated act
The Commission's working plan expects the textile DPP delegated act to be adopted around 2027, fixing the exact data every passport must carry: composition, durability, recycled content, substances of concern, repair and end-of-life.
ESPR Working Plan 2025–2030 - ~2028–2029Indicative
Textile DPP obligation applies
After the ESPR transition period—a minimum of 18 months from the delegated act—a Digital Product Passport becomes mandatory for textiles placed on the EU market.
ESPR · Art. 4
Dates marked “in force” are legally fixed. The textile DPP dates (~2027 adoption, ~2028–2029 application) are the European Commission's indicative planning dates; the binding date is set by the delegated act itself. Reflects EU law as of September 2026.
The infrastructure decisions are being made now. Partner with us
The infrastructure to make textile compliance operational.
Brands assemble and cryptographically sign passports. Operators document lifecycle events—repair, resale, recycling. Regulators and consumers verify the full record through a single QR. One coordination layer. Every actor in the garment's life. Every garment. Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling—the brands that build on it now will help define what comes next.
Cryptographically signed records for every garment.
Repair, resale and recycling, documented as they happen.
Durability and repair evidence, structured to substantiate a fee assessment.
One scan resolves the full record at the point of need.