who is liable if there is incorrect information in the product passport of a mattress

What you concretely must do

What is expected of you

The manufacturer is responsible for the accuracy of the data

Article 27 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) places the obligations for the product passport with the manufacturer. This means that the party that places the mattress on the market is responsible for the information contained in that passport: materials, composition, origin, maintenance instructions and the other data that article 9 of the ESPR prescribes for the digital product passport. For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this practically means that someone within the organisation must be the owner of that data file — not as a formality, but because that person can be held accountable if it turns out that something is wrong. Who precisely qualifies as the manufacturer is not always self-evident; Am I an importer or manufacturer according to the ESPR? goes into this further.

Data must be traceable to a method or source

Article 39 of the ESPR requires that data in the passport are produced via established test, measurement or calculation methods. This is more than a technical provision: it means that a company not only puts a figure in the passport, but can also show how that figure was determined. For a mattress manufacturer, this then includes, for example, the source of figures on material composition or on the durability of the filling. A small team that collects this data from suppliers would practically be well advised to document for each piece of data where it comes from and according to which method it was established.

Changes to the product must be reflected in the passport

Article 40 of the ESPR addresses the prevention of circumvention and deterioration of performance. This directly relates to situations in which a mattress changes over time — a different foam type, a different supplier of filling material, a modified cover. The passport must reflect the current situation, not the situation at the time the product was once launched. What this means in practice when the composition changes is detailed under do I need to update the product passport if I change the foam or filling.

Where things go wrong in practice

A few situations come up regularly in practice:

• A manufacturer adopts the material specification of a supplier without checking it, and that specification turns out to be outdated following a recipe change at the supplier itself.
• A company sells mattresses under its own brand but leaves production and passport data entirely to the manufacturer that makes the mattress, without agreeing who corrects if an error is found.
• When filling is changed, production is adjusted, but the passport of the stock already in circulation is not updated, as a result of which old and new data exist side by side.
• An importer from outside the EU supplies a mattress with passport data that have been drawn up by the manufacturer in the country of origin, without anyone within the EU having verified those data.
• A webshop sells mattresses via a marketplace and assumes that the marketplace is responsible for the passport, while that obligation lies elsewhere in the chain.

These situations show that the question "who is responsible" rarely lands on a single point in the chain. For those who have mattresses produced under their own brand, the distinction between brand owner and manufacturer is relevant; that is addressed on who is responsible for the passport if I have mattresses made under my own brand. For those dealing with a manufacturer outside the EU, a similar question applies, detailed on My manufacturer is outside the European Union — who arranges the product passport then?.

What you can record

For companies that want to maintain control over this liability question, it is practical to document a number of matters in writing — not because the law explicitly prescribes this, but because it makes a difference if it is on record when the question comes up later:

• An overview of which department or which person within the organisation is responsible for compiling and keeping the passport data up to date.
• A file per product line with the sources of the data: test reports, material certificates, information from suppliers, and the method by which those data were determined (in accordance with Article 39 of the ESPR).
• Agreements with suppliers about who notifies a change in material or composition, and within what time that happens.
• A contractual agreement between brand owner and manufacturer about who draws up the passport data, who checks them and who corrects them if an error is found — particularly relevant in private label constructions.
• A log of changes to the passport, so that it is demonstrable when an adjustment was made following a product change.
• A documented procedure in case an error is discovered: who corrects the passport, who informs the buyer, and who assesses whether earlier deliveries are affected as a result.

For those not yet sure what role their own organisation plays in this chain, an general overview can be found on Who is responsible for the product passport for mattresses? That overview helps to place the question about incorrect data within the broader role allocation between manufacturer, importer, distributor and seller under their own brand — a role allocation that ultimately determines where the liability question is raised when a passport turns out to contain incorrect information.