Digital Product Passport
A Digital Product Passport is a digital identity card for a product, component or material. Under EU law it is being introduced as a framework, then specified product group by product group. For most organisations the operational problem is evidence across a catalogue, not the QR code.
Written by SOURCE Research. Published 18 August 2026. Last reviewed 18 August 2026. Not legal advice.
What should an organisation do first?
Identify products and suppliers, see which information and evidence already exist, and collect what is missing from the party that holds it. Generating a passport on an empty record does not create readiness.
Current regulatory status
What organisations need to know
- What a Digital Product Passport is — and what it is not.
- How ESPR relates to DPP — framework versus delegated acts.
- Who may be responsible — economic operators are not interchangeable.
- DPP readiness — identity, evidence, gaps, suppliers, audit trail.
SOURCE product capability
The SOURCE workspace connects a catalogue, resolves product and supplier identity, shows coverage and missing claims, and groups supplier requests. That maps to readiness work, not to legal classification. Read the product and the methodology.
Primary sources
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (ESPR) — Official Journal of the European Union, 2024-06-28. Framework regulation. Applied since 18 July 2024. Product-specific DPP obligations are not listed as a single universal deadline in this act.
- EUR-Lex summary: Ecodesign requirements for sustainable products — EUR-Lex, 2024. Commission-facing summary of ESPR, including the Digital Product Passport concept.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 (Batteries) — Official Journal of the European Union, 2023-07-28. Battery passport obligations sit in this regulation, not only in ESPR.
FAQ
- What is a Digital Product Passport?
- A Digital Product Passport is a structured, electronically accessible set of product information introduced in EU product law. Exact fields, access rules and deadlines are set per product group — not as one universal form for every SKU.
- When does a DPP become mandatory?
- The ESPR framework has applied since 18 July 2024. Product-specific Digital Product Passport obligations follow delegated acts for each product group. There is no single date on which every product in the EU needs a DPP.
- Does SOURCE create Digital Product Passports?
- SOURCE is built to make a catalogue evidence-ready: identity, existing claims, missing data and supplier collection. Publishing a passport or QR code is not the current discovery product. A DPP is treated as an output of a complete record.