Ecommerce Europe warns EU product passport rules could raise costs

Europe’s digital product passport is being sold as a clean, modern label for fashion: more traceability, better product information, stronger enforcement. Ecommerce Europe is now warning that the promise could fray fast if Brussels turns the system into an expensive compliance stack that smaller companies cannot absorb.

In a position paper published on June 9, 2026, the group backed the Digital Product Passport but argued that it has to reflect current business practices, roll out gradually and avoid disproportionate costs and burdens. It wants policymakers to begin with a small set of easy-to-digitalise product requirements, focus first on data that do not need constant updating, and keep flexibility around data granularity, data carriers and display methods. It also called for a stepwise approach, harmonised data language and standards, and clearer coordination with parallel EU frameworks.

That caution lands in the middle of a regulatory build-out already reshaping fashion’s back end. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, adopted in 2024 and in force since July 18, 2024, created the legal framework for Digital Product Passports and applies to products placed on the EU market whether they are made inside or outside the bloc. The European Commission followed with a public consultation on April 9, 2025, asking how passport data should be stored and managed by service providers and whether those providers should face certification requirements, with feedback due by July 1, 2025.

For textiles, the stakes are even sharper. The Commission’s textiles strategy says it will introduce a Digital Product Passport alongside design requirements, microplastics measures and harmonised extended producer responsibility rules. A European Parliament study published in June 2024, drawing on a survey of more than 80 stakeholders, said a textile passport could strengthen traceability, circularity and transparency, while sketching a three-phase deployment scenario for the sector.

Industry is already drawing its lines around practicality. EURATEX said in March 2026 that it supports a passport for apparel if it is practical and proportionate, while an EU-backed consortium opened a textile-supplier pilot in April 2026, a sign that the passport is moving out of policy decks and into real workflows. The real pressure point is not whether fashion wants transparency. It is who pays for the scanning, the syncing and the upkeep when every seam of the supply chain has to talk to Brussels in the same language. Some industry briefings expect the textile requirements to be finalized by 2027 and mandatory by 2030, which gives brands a window, but not much room to treat this like another optional sustainability flourish.