Implementing the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

The Ecodesign Forum will be the main arena for consulting stakeholders on the development of rules under ESPR. It will gather a very wide range of stakeholders and key ecodesign actors, with the aim of contributing to the preparation of ecodesign requirements and working plans, and to examining other areas of relevance to the ESPR process.

The Forum will be established soon after ESPR enters into force. There will be an open call for membership applications, which will be published on the Register of Commission Expert Groups and distributed via other relevant channels.

To ensure the public and stakeholders are well informed of what is planned under ESPR, the Commission will adopt and regularly update working plans, setting out lists of products and measures that will be assessed. The ESPR text requires the Commission to adopt and publish the first ESPR working plan within 9 months of ESPR’s entry into force, in the first half of 2025. The working plan will cover a minimum period of 3 years.

Preparation for this is already underway: in 2023 the Commission held an Open Public Consultation on what the first ESPR product priorities should be, based on preparatory work being carried out by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre. (A summary of the results of the Open Public Consultation is available here. An updated version of the JRC’s assessment is currently being finalized and will be published here in early 2024.)

In addition, following agreement by the Council and the European Parliament, the ESPR text now includes several products which the Commission will be obliged to prioritise unless there is justification for not doing so. These include:-

• Iron & steel, aluminium, textiles (garments and footwear), furniture (including mattresses), tyres, detergents, paints, lubricants, chemicals, energy-related products (including new measures and revisions of existing ones) and ICT products, as well as other electronics.

All of the above will be taken into account in the development of the first ESPR working plan. Before being adopted by the Commission, however, members of the above-mentioned Ecodesign Forum will be consulted, and their views taken into account.

The development of ecodesign requirements includes preparatory studies, impact assessments and consultation with stakeholders. Preparatory work, for certain products, such as textiles or steel, has already begun, whilst the work on other prioritised products and potential horizontal measures will begin after the adoption of the first working plan.

The adoption of the first rules to operationalise measures on the destruction of unsold consumer products goods will happen in the first year of the ESPR entering into force and includes setting a reporting format for the transparency requirements, and defining relevant exemptions to the ban on the destruction of textiles and footwear laid down under the ESPR.

Technical preparation for the roll-out of the Digital Product Passport (DPP) is already underway by the Commission and will include the adoption of rules on the identifiers and data carriers that will be needed, work on access rights to DPP information, as well as the establishment of a DPP registry and web portal, amongst other supporting activities.

The rules proposed under ESPR will apply to all products placed on the EU market, whether produced inside or outside the EU. ESPR will be compliant with international trade rules and the European Union will continue to work in partnership with producing countries and 3rd country businesses who share the goal of improving the sustainability of their products. Moreover, the EU will be providing support to partner countries and will assess possible impacts on third countries thoroughly. New measures such as the digital product passport will be developed in an open dialogue with international partners to ensure that they help remove trade barriers for greener products and lower costs for sustainable investments, marketing and compliance.

ESPR is based on, and will ultimately replace, the current Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC. But there will be no gap: during the transition period between the two instruments, the existing Directive will continue to operate, including by implementing the new Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2022-2024, also adopted on 30 March 2022.

The Ecodesign and energy labelling working plan 2022-2024 builds on work done since the adoption of the first Ecodesign Directive, but also covers the work required under the Energy Labelling Framework Regulation (EU/2017/1369). The plan also covers similar work on tyre labelling that has a specific legal basis. The European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL) is the website providing public information on products covered by energy labels.

The working plan 2022-2024 covers new energy-related products and updates and increases the ambition for products that are already regulated, as a transitionary measure until the new regulation enters into force. It addresses consumer electronics, such as smartphones, tablets and solar panels, the fastest-growing waste stream.

Main page: Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)

Main law: New Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (2024)

Related strategies: Circular Economy Action Plan, Energy Label and Ecodesign, Sustainable and Circular Textiles