What happens if I don't arrange a digital product passport for my mattresses?
The regulation (ESPR) links the digital product passport to the placing of a product on the market. When the delegated act for mattresses enters into force, that means in principle that a mattress without a valid passport does not meet the conditions to be sold. What that means in practice for a specific company depends on the role in the supply chain and on the final text of the act, and that is work for a lawyer or the supervisory authority, not for this article.
Important to note: that delegated act for mattresses does not yet exist. The ESPR work plan mentions 2028 as the expected time of publication, with an entry into force date that follows thereafter, possibly around 2030. As long as the act has not been published, there is no hard and fast obligation to have a passport now. Yet there is every reason to understand what will change, so that you are not caught off guard once the date is set.
The obligation comes from a European regulation, not from a choice of your industry organisation
The ESPR is a directly applicable EU regulation. That means that the obligation will not then depend on how an individual Member State wants to implement it; the core is fixed at European level. For Dutch entrepreneurs, that is convenient, because the distinction between "what the EU requires" and "what the Netherlands might add on top" remains limited. Those who wish to delve deeper into this can go through the structure of the regulation and the concepts used in it without concern in the knowledge bank with the subjects worked out by situation.
What supervisory authorities may bring into view
The regulation provides for market surveillance of products that do not comply with the requirements, similar to how this already works with other product rules such as CE marking. In doing so, supervisory authorities can look at matters such as: is a passport present, is the information in it correct, and is the QR code that points to the passport functional. How the Dutch and European supervisory authorities will concretely implement this for mattresses is not yet established, and this article deliberately makes no prediction about it. What can be said is: market surveillance of products has existed for some time, and the ESPR builds on this rather than introducing a completely new system.
Consequences towards your own supply chain
Even if a supervisory authority does not call at your door, the absence of a passport can have consequences in the supply chain itself. A bed specialist shop that purchases from a manufacturer, a hotel buyer that invites tenders, or an importer that purchases mattresses from another EU country: they can then ask for the passport, simply because they will in turn have to be able to show it to their own customers or supervisory authorities. A supplier without a passport then runs the risk that buyers choose a competitor who does have that in order, regardless of what the law exactly prescribes. That commercial effect may materialise earlier than the legal obligation itself.
What this means for current purchasing and contracts
Those who now conclude long-term supply contracts are well advised to think about who will then be responsible for providing the passport data: the manufacturer, the importer, or the party selling the product under its own name. That is a question that can be answered now, even without the delegated act already in place, and it prevents discussion at the moment when the obligation does apply. What such a passport looks like in practice and which data goes into it can be read on the page about where the information in the passport comes from.
Prepare now, without haste
Because the precise date is not yet fixed, there is no reason for hasty steps. However, there is reason to take inventory now of which data you already have, which are still missing, and who in your chain will be responsible later. Companies that start this process early will only need to take the final steps upon publication of the delegated act instead of starting from scratch. If you are unsure whether and how this affects your company, a conversation with a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority is the appropriate way forward for your specific situation.
Do you want to first get an overview of where your company stands? Take the free product scan with a few questions and an immediate indication, or browse through the frequently asked questions about the digital product passport to see which situation comes closest to yours.