Regulatory Guide

EU Central DPP Registry — What Manufacturers Need to Know

Last reviewed: July 2026  ·  Traceable Regulatory Team

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The EU Central DPP Registry, established by Article 13 of the ESPR (Regulation 2024/1781), is the European Commission's authoritative directory of every Digital Product Passport on the EU market. It holds a unique product identifier, the URL of each passport, and metadata for authority access. The Commission confirms the Registry, its testing environment, and User Guidelines go live 20 July 2026, and its operating rules are now set by the adopted Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, which every DPP service provider must integrate accordingly.

Key Takeaways

  • The EU Central Registry is the Commission-operated database that will index all product passports. Under ESPR Article 13(1), the European Commission was required to set it up by 19 July 2026, its own set-up deadline rather than a public launch. The Commission has since confirmed the Registry, testing environment, and User Guidelines go live 20 July 2026. Product-specific obligations still follow from delegated acts adopted under Article 4 of the ESPR, on their own timelines. The registry enables market surveillance authorities to verify compliance across the EU. Its operating rules are now set by the adopted Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, and Traceable will support automatic registry connection per that regulation's registration API.

A Single Registry for All EU Product Passports

Article 13 of the ESPR (2024/1781) mandates the creation of an EU-wide Digital Product Passport registry, commonly called the EU DPP registry. Required to be set up by the European Commission by 19 July 2026, this registry will serve as the central index for all DPPs across every regulated product category, starting with batteries and expanding to textiles, electronics, construction products, and beyond.

Updated 17 July 2026: the Commission’s own DPP Registry page now confirms the Registry, its testing environment, and User Guidelines go live 20 July 2026, one day after the 19 July 2026 Article 13(1) set-up deadline, which was always a Commission-facing legal deadline rather than a public launch date. The Commission has also adopted the implementing act that governs how the registry operates: Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, adopted 16 July 2026 and in force from 6 August 2026. See the full detail in our coverage of the confirmed launch.

The registry will not host the passport data itself. Instead, it functions as a directory: given a product identifier (via GS1 Digital Link), the registry returns the location of the product’s DPP data, hosted by the manufacturer or their designated DPP platform.

Technical Architecture, Per the Adopted Implementing Regulation

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778 confirms the registry’s structure and operating rules. Per Articles 3, 4, 8, and 9 of that regulation:

  • Registry components: a secure website interface, an API for registering DPPs and retrieving data, a verification platform, a scheme for generating unique registration identifiers, a storage component for identifiers and customs commodity codes, a public list of verified DPP service providers, a semantic repository, a log system, and identification and authorisation schemes for users.
  • Identity verification, not EORI lookup: to register a DPP, an economic operator must first become a “verified economic operator” under Article 4, proven via a qualified electronic signature (sole traders) or a qualified electronic seal from a qualified trust service provider (legal entities), issued under the eIDAS Regulation (EU 910/2014). That verified status lasts up to three years before it must be renewed. Value chain actors such as repairers, refurbishers, remanufacturers, and recyclers go through the equivalent process under Article 5.
  • Automated registration checks: when a DPP is submitted for registration via the API or the secure user interface, the Commission automatically checks the data’s semantic conformity, the correct granularity level (model, batch, or item), the validity of the commodity code, and the link to the hosted passport data, before issuing a unique registration identifier. The regulation is explicit that this automated check is not proof of substantive regulatory compliance. That remains a market surveillance function.
  • Availability, not a fixed uptime figure: Article 15 requires the registry to be accessible at all times except for announced maintenance, with outage records kept for at least five years. The regulation does not publish a specific uptime percentage or SLA.

Article 78: Essential Requirements for the Battery Passport’s Technical Design and Operation

The registry defined under ESPR Article 13 is where the battery passport gets registered and looked up. What the passport itself must do, as software, is defined separately, under Article 78 of the EU Battery Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1542). Both provisions matter for anyone selecting or building a battery passport platform: Article 13 constrains the registration surface, Article 78 constrains the passport surface behind it.

Article 78 sets out eight essential requirements that the passport’s technical design and operation must satisfy. The list below paraphrases the consolidated EUR-Lex text (02023R1542, consolidated version of 31 July 2025, incorporating the M1 amendment made by ESPR Regulation (EU) 2024/1781):

  • (a) Interoperability with other DPPs. The battery passport must be fully interoperable with other digital product passports required by Union law on ecodesign, at the technical, semantic, and organisational levels of end-to-end communication and data transfer.
  • (b) Free access based on Annex XIII rights. Consumers, economic operators, and other relevant actors must be able to access the passport free of charge, with the specific fields each can see governed by Annex XIII and the implementing act adopted under Article 77(9).
  • (c) Data storage responsibility. The data must be stored by the economic operator responsible under Article 77(4) or (7), or by operators authorised to act on that operator’s behalf.
  • (d) Restrictions on authorised operators. Where authorised operators store or process the data, they may not sell, re-use, or process it, in whole or in part, beyond what is necessary to provide the storage or processing service.
  • (e) Continuity after the operator exits. The passport must remain available after the responsible economic operator ceases to exist or ceases its activity in the Union.
  • (f) Restricted write access. Rights to access, introduce, modify, or update information must be restricted according to Annex XIII and the implementing act adopted under Article 77(9).
  • (g) Authentication, reliability, integrity. Data authentication, reliability, and integrity must be ensured.
  • (h) Security, privacy, anti-fraud. The passport must ensure a high level of security and privacy, and prevent fraud.

Two of these requirements have direct platform-selection consequences. Requirement (a) means a passport hosted in a way that cannot exchange data with other ESPR-family DPP systems will fall short of the essential requirements before any product-specific test is applied. Requirement (e) creates an escrow-style obligation: if a DPP service provider disappears or stops operating in the Union, the passport data must still be reachable. Manufacturers should ask any prospective provider, in writing, how continuity is guaranteed in either scenario.

Article 78 itself does not name a specific technical standard for interoperability or authentication. Those specifics are expected to arrive through implementing and delegated acts, and through the semantic repository maintained by the Commission under the DPP Registry Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778.

Source: consolidated text of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Article 78, version 02023R1542, EN, 31.07.2025, 002.002 (published on EUR-Lex).

What This Means for Manufacturers

You do not interact with the registry directly in most cases. Your DPP platform handles registration automatically when you publish a passport. However, you need to ensure that your platform (or your organisation directly) can complete the eIDAS-based identity verification the implementing regulation requires, and that your passport data is hosted on infrastructure the registry can link to.

Timeline

Under ESPR Article 13(1), the European Commission was required to set up the registry infrastructure by 19 July 2026. The Commission has confirmed the Registry, testing environment, and User Guidelines go live 20 July 2026. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, which governs how the registry operates, enters into force 6 August 2026. Battery passport registration becomes mandatory from 18 February 2027, the same date by which every EU Member State must appoint the national administrator who manages that country’s registry access rights. The registry is designed to scale across all ESPR product categories as their respective delegated acts come into force.

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What This Means For Your Business

The EU Central Registry is a mandatory infrastructure component of the DPP framework. Once a product category is brought into scope by a delegated act under Article 4 of the ESPR, passports for those products are indexed in the registry, and market surveillance authorities across all EU Member States use it to verify that products on their market have compliant passports.

Under Article 13(1), the Commission was required to set up the registry by 19 July 2026; the Commission has confirmed the Registry itself goes live 20 July 2026. There is no general operator-registration obligation on that date; operator-facing obligations arise product-by-product as delegated acts take effect. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, adopted 16 July 2026, now sets out the registry's operating rules, including the identity verification every economic operator must complete before registering a passport. Companies that already have their passports created and published will be able to connect quickly.

Action Steps

  1. Create and publish your product passports now, so they are ready to connect to the registry. Prepare for the eIDAS-based identity verification required by Article 4 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778: a qualified electronic signature for sole traders, or a qualified electronic seal from a qualified trust service provider for legal entities. Monitor the Official Journal for the product-specific delegated acts that still govern when registration becomes mandatory for your category, since the registry's own implementing act has now been adopted. Choose a DPP platform that commits to automatic registry connection per the adopted implementing regulation.

Technical documentation

Implementation detail for the requirements above, on our documentation site.

Frequently Asked Questions

Established under Article 13 of the ESPR (Regulation 2024/1781), the EU Central DPP Registry is the European Commission's authoritative directory of every Digital Product Passport on the EU market. It holds a unique product identifier, the URL of each passport, and metadata for authority access. The Commission has confirmed that the Registry, its testing environment and User Guidelines go live on 20 July 2026.

No. The registry functions as a directory: given a product identifier via GS1 Digital Link, it returns the location of the product's DPP data, which is hosted by the manufacturer or their designated DPP platform. The passport data itself remains with the operator or platform, not the Commission.

Only a verified economic operator can register a passport. Under Articles 4 and 5 of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, an operator proves identity via the eIDAS framework: a qualified electronic signature for a sole trader, or a qualified electronic seal from a qualified trust service provider for a legal entity. Verified status lasts up to three years before it must be renewed.

No. On submission the Commission automatically checks the data's semantic conformity, the correct granularity level (model, batch or item), the validity of the commodity code, and the link to the hosted passport data. The regulation is explicit that this automated check is not proof of substantive regulatory compliance. Substantive compliance remains a market surveillance function.

Battery passport registration becomes mandatory from 18 February 2027, the same date by which every EU Member State must appoint the national administrator that manages that country's registry access rights. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, which governs how the registry operates, enters into force on 6 August 2026.

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