The European Commission's digital product passport registry went live on 20 July 2026. It runs under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, adopted on 16 July 2026, published in the Official Journal on 17 July 2026 and in force from 6 August 2026.
The Commission describes the registry as the infrastructure for registering unique product identifiers and associated metadata. A test environment is available alongside the live one. Economic operators must be verified, and the regulation makes a verified operator responsible for the accuracy and completeness of its data. The registry also includes a list of verified digital product passport service providers.
The registry is where identifiers are registered. It is not a place where a manufacturer's full records sit. The first mandatory passport obligation is for certain batteries, from 18 February 2027, under the Battery Regulation. From that date, each light means-of-transport battery, each industrial battery above 2 kWh and each electric vehicle battery placed on the market needs a battery passport. No ESPR product delegated act has been adopted yet, so no other product has a passport obligation in force.
A passport hangs off a persistent unique identifier. A firm that cannot pull up its records by part, batch or serial number has a data problem before it has a compliance problem. A paper log or a spreadsheet with no stable reference for each item will not carry that load.
TraceID does not register passports. It does not connect to the registry and does not send anything to it. Where the registry comes up on this site, it is context for the records a manufacturer keeps, not a service TraceID provides.
For a small manufacturer, the practical job is to give each part a stable identifier and keep its records retrievable. Read how Traced sets up a product record and passport.