What does the ESPR change for the clothing and textile industry?

What you must do concretely

What is expected of you

The ESPR is a framework regulation: it does not itself lay down concrete requirements for clothing and textiles, but gives the European Commission the power to develop those requirements per product group. Article 1 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 describes the scope broadly: almost all physical products placed on the EU market can fall under a delegated act. For the clothing and textile industry, this means in particular: a framework has been established, and the real obligations will come later, product by product. What is currently expected of a company is primarily to follow that process and to get the information in order that will be needed later.

Find out whether your products fall within the regulation

The ESPR does not automatically affect all textile products. For each product group, it is determined which requirements will apply, and not every garment or household textile is affected in the same way or at the same time. For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this means there is a first step in finding out which of its own product groups are mentioned. This is not a legal exercise in itself, but a practical inventory: which collections, materials and product categories does the company carry, and do these correspond to what is described in the upcoming regulations. An overview of which products from the clothing and textile sector fall under the ESPR provides an initial reference point, as does the question of whether the digital product passport applies to the company's own clothing and textiles.

Follow the delegated act for your own product group

Because the concrete requirements only arise once the Commission publishes a delegated act, monitoring that process has become a recurring task. For a mid-sized company, this means that someone — often in the role of compliance, procurement or sustainability — must monitor the Commission's announcements, rather than waiting for a sectoral announcement. What a delegated act is exactly and why it determines what a company must do is described on the page on delegated acts. For most companies, this is a matter of periodic checking, not a daily task, but a task that cannot be left to chance.

Assess whether your own product category counts as clothing or not

Within the textile industry, clothing, accessories, shoes, household textiles and workwear often overlap in administration, whereas the regulations do not necessarily treat them equally. A company that sells both clothing and bags or belts would be well advised to check whether the digital product passport also applies to those accessories and shoes will apply to, and whether that happens at a different time than for the clothing line. The same applies to companies that supply workwear or uniforms: the question of whether a digital product passport also needs to be made for workwear and occupational clothing is a different question than that for consumer clothing. Those who supply fabrics for interiors, curtains, bed linens or other household textiles, would do well to keep this separate from the clothing collection in their own administration.

Make a distinction between the ESPR and the broader textile strategy

For companies already engaged in sustainability, confusion sometimes arises between the ESPR, which regulates the digital product passport, and the European textile strategy, which more broadly addresses waste and producer responsibility, among other things. The difference between the two is relevant because the obligations do not have the same source, timing or scope. Those who want to compare the two will find an explanation on the page about the distinction between the ESPR and the European textile strategy, and on the question of whether extended producer responsibility has anything to do with the digital product passport.

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of situations come up again with companies preparing for the ESPR:

• Assume it is not yet relevant because the date is not yet fixed. The delegated act does not yet exist, but the preparation time — gathering supplier data, setting up systems — takes more time than is often thought if you only start when it is published.
• Only look at the main collection. A brand focuses on the clothing line and overlooks that accessories, footwear or a workwear line may fall under a separate assessment.
• Thinking that small business size automatically means exemption. Whether and how a company's size plays a role is a question that must be answered separately and should not be assumed.
• Leaving samples and showroom models out of consideration or including them without substantiation. Some companies are uncertain whether test collections and showroom pieces that are not sold fall under the same rules as the regular collection.
• Treating the textile strategy and the ESPR as one and the same obligation, thereby applying obligations from one process to the other, or conversely ignoring them.

For the question about business size there is more detailed guidance on whether the product passport also applies to small companies, and for the question about test collections on the page on samples and showroom models that are not sold.

What you can record

• An overview of all product groups that the company offers, with a note for each group indicating whether it may fall under a delegated act.
• A fixed moment (for example quarterly) at which the status of the delegated act for the company's own product group is checked with the Commission.
• An internal responsible person who monitors the progress of the regulation and reports on it.
• A distinction in the records between clothing, accessories, workwear and household textiles, so that each category can be assessed separately regarding when and how requirements apply.
• A note on business size and any relevance thereof, including the source on which that conclusion is based.
• An overview of which suppliers and manufacturers can already provide data that could eventually be included in a product passport, even if this is not yet mandatory.