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Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

The new regulation will improve EU products’ circularity, energy performance and other environmental sustainability aspects.

The current Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC has a long track record of delivering benefits to businesses, consumers and the environment. In 2021 alone, the impact of the current ecodesign measures, covering 31 product groups, saved EUR 120 billion in energy expenditure for EU consumers and led to a 10% lower annual energy consumption by the products in scope.

More environmentally sustainable and circular products

The proposal for a new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), published on 30 March 2022, is the cornerstone of the Commission’s approach to more environmentally sustainable and circular products. The proposal builds on the existing Ecodesign Directive, which currently only covers energy-related products.

Law

The proposal establishes a framework to set ecodesign requirements for specific product groups to significantly improve their circularity, energy performance and other environmental sustainability aspects. It will enable the setting of performance and information requirements for almost all categories of physical goods placed on the EU market (with some notable exceptions, such as food and feed, as defined in Regulation 178/2002). For groups of products that share sufficient common characteristics, the framework will also allow to set horizontal rules.

The framework will allow for the setting of a wide range of requirements, including on:

  • product durability, reusability, upgradability and reparability
  • presence of substances that inhibit circularity
  • energy and resource efficiency
  • recycled content
  • remanufacturing and recycling
  • carbon and environmental footprints
  • information requirements, including a Digital Product Passport

By 2030, the new sustainable products framework can lead to 132 mtoe of primary energy savings, which corresponds roughly to 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas, almost equivalent to EU’s import of Russian gas.

Read more about sustainable products

The New Digital Product Passport

The new “Digital Product Passport” will provide information about products’ environmental sustainability. This information will be easily accessible by scanning a data carrier and it will include attributes such as the durability and reparability, the recycled content or the availability of spare parts of a product. It should help consumers and businesses make informed choices when purchasing products, facilitate repairs and recycling and improve transparency about products’ life cycle impacts on the environment. The product passport should also help public authorities to better perform checks and controls.

Ecodesign from an international perspective

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 who share to goal to improve the sustainability of their products. Moreover, the EU will be providing support to partner countries and 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.

Ongoing work under the EU’s current ecodesign framework: ecodesign and energy labelling working plan 2022-24

ESPR is based on, and will ultimately replace, the current Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC. Until the latter happens, Directive 2009/125/EC will continue to operate. Its provisions require that priorities for implementation are established through regularly updated rolling working plans that take stock of progress made and include indicative priorities for new energy-related product groups to be considered.

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) and takes stock of the progress made with the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL). The plan also covers similar work on tyre labelling that has a specific legal basis.

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.

Timeline

Key dates related to Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation:

  1. 5 December 2023
    Commission welcomes provisional agreement for more sustainable, repairable and circular products
  2. 31 January 2023-12 May 2023
    Open Public Consultation (New product priorities for ESPR)
  3. 30 March 2022
    Adoption ESPR proposal (as part of Sustainable Products Initiative)
  4. 14 September 2020–22 June 2022
    Public consultation and roadmap (Sustainable Products Initiative)
  5. 11 March 2020
    Adoption New Circular Economy Action Plan
  6. 11 December 2019
    Adoption European Green Deal
The Road to Green - How can we make sure that products last longer and are repairable?
European Union