Digital product passport: six standards EN 18216, 18219, 18220, 18221, 18222 and 18223 published as harmonised under the Ecodesign Regulation — Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736
Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736 of 14 July 2026, published and in force from 15 July, publishes the references of six harmonised standards on digital product passports drafted in support of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. A passport that complies with these standards is presumed to meet the requirements of Articles 10 and 11 of the Regulation covered by them.
- The standards: EN 18216:2026 — data exchange protocols; EN 18219:2026 — unique identifiers; EN 18220:2026 — data carriers; EN 18221:2026 — data storage, archiving and data persistence; EN 18222:2026 — application programming interfaces (APIs) for passport lifecycle management and searchability; EN 18223:2026 — system interoperability.
- They were developed by the joint committee CEN-CLC/JTC 24 “Digital Product Passport – Framework and System”, whose secretariat is held by DIN, under standardisation request M/604 (Decision C(2024) 5423 as amended by C(2025) 8024). According to CEN-CENELEC the series comprises eight standards — the other two cover access rights management and information security, and data authentication, reliability and integrity.
- CEN-CENELEC describes the passport as neither fully centralised nor fully decentralised: the Commission operates a registry of product, manufacturer and facility identifiers, while product data and their long-term backup are held by third-party service providers, usually private companies.
- Which data go into a passport will be set by the acts for each product group, and European standards will specify how to determine or calculate them. CEN-CENELEC therefore expects standardisation requests to product technical committees for standards describing the test methods industry is to use to establish the data stored in passports.