GS1 Digital Link · Digital Product Passport
The first product passports
become law in February 2027.
The EU's Digital Product Passport starts with batteries and extends product group by product group. The passport is a document your systems produce. What the regulation puts on the product is smaller and harder: a printed carrier that has to resolve, per unit, for the life of the thing it is printed on.
Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 · ESPR (EU) 2024/1781 · dates below are the enforceable ones, not the aspirational ones
The dates
Not a trend forecast.
A compliance calendar.
ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781
The framework that makes Digital Product Passports mandatory per product group. Which group, when, and what data: each arrives by its own delegated act.
Battery passports become mandatory
Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542: every EV, LMT and industrial battery over 2 kWh placed on the EU market needs a passport, retrievable through a data carrier printed on the battery.
Textiles and tyres queue up
First in the ESPR working plan after batteries. Delegated acts set the exact dates; artwork and labelling decisions are being made now, ahead of them.
Furniture, steel, aluminium and more
The working plan extends group by group. The direction is one-way: a machine-readable carrier on the product, resolving to data about the unit.
The honest scope
We sell the address on the product.
Not the passport behind it.
What that buys you
- ✓A conformant Digital Link carrier: GTIN, lot and serial in the path, resolving at the edge
- ✓gs1:dpp attached at product, lot or unit level, resolving today
- ✓Serialized runs to 100,000 per batch, 1 credit per unit, re-derivable free
- ✓Your own domain on the pack, so the printed URI outlives any vendor
- ✓Destinations editable after print, which is the whole point when the rules move
What we will not pretend
- We do not author, host or validate the passport document itself; that is your data, produced by your systems.
- We do not promise conformance with delegated acts that have not been published.
- No EPCIS event trails: we resolve identity, we are not a traceability system.
Questions
Is taproute DPP-certified?
No, and neither is anyone else: there is no DPP certification to hold, because the delegated acts that would define one are still landing. What exists today is the plumbing the regulation already describes: a data carrier on the product that resolves to information about the unit. We ship that as a conformant GS1 Digital Link resolver with gs1:dpp among its link types, and we verify the resolver against GS1's official public test suite. That claim is self-asserted, like every claim in this market, and re-verifiable, unlike most of them.
Which products need a passport, and when?
Batteries first: EV, light-transport and industrial batteries over 2 kWh, from February 2027, under the Battery Regulation. Textiles and tyres are next in the ESPR working plan, with dates set by delegated acts, and further groups follow through 2030. If your product is not on that list, nothing is mandatory for you yet; what is already true for everyone is that the carrier you print has to keep resolving for the life of the product, which is a longer commitment than most QR vendors' pricing pages.
What does the code on the product actually have to do?
Resolve. The passport itself is a structured document your systems produce and host; the regulation requires the product to carry a machine-readable data carrier that leads to it, per unit or per batch where required. That is exactly the shape of a GS1 Digital Link: the GTIN, lot and serial you already print become the path, and the resolver answers with the right destination for whoever is asking. A catalogue item is 200 credits once, a serialized unit is 1 credit, and editing where a link points after printing is free, which matters when the destination is regulated and the artwork is not reprintable.
The rules are still moving. What happens when they change?
You edit the linkset and the printed code follows: that is the entire argument for a resolver over a hardcoded URL. What we will not do is promise you today that we satisfy a delegated act that has not been published. When a vendor offers you that certainty, they are selling you a roadmap; the honest offer is a carrier that resolves, under your own domain if you want it, with the destination in your control for as long as the product is in the field.