The Digital Product Passport for textiles and apparel: what is expected

Textiles and apparel rank first among the final products in the Commission's ESPR working plan, with an indicative adoption year of 2027. The Commission's textile passport page gives the planned adoption of the delegated act as the fourth quarter of 2027.^2,3

Adoption is not the compliance date. ESPR requires each delegated act to apply no earlier than 18 months after it enters into force, except in duly justified cases. On the Commission's current plan, that places general application in 2029 at the earliest.^1,3

Until the act is adopted, no textile product is required to carry a passport, and any date you read beyond the Commission's plan is a forecast.¹

The Commission says the information may include, depending on the final act:³

The passport is expected to be reachable both at online points of sale and through a data carrier on the garment itself, such as a QR code. The exact requirements will be set by the act and its technical specifications.³

The decision that most changes the cost for a brand has not been made: whether a textile passport is kept per model, per batch or per individual garment. ESPR leaves it to the delegated act.¹

The Joint Research Centre's preparatory study on textile passport content, published in May 2026, notes that an identifier can be set at any of the three levels and that granularity is a key cost driver: moving from model level to item level where the industry does not already work that way can raise costs significantly. The study proposes the level for each data point. It is preparatory work and states that it does not necessarily reflect the Commission's position.⁴

The study also leaves data carriers out of its scope, so which carriers the textile act will allow is still open.⁴

The working plan treats footwear as a separate category from textiles, because of its distinct materials, function and supply chains. Rather than a passport act, it commissions a study on footwear under ESPR, to be completed by the end of 2027.²

The passport obligation in the textiles act is expected to apply to final apparel products. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) study excludes intermediate products such as fabrics, yarns and fibers from its scope.⁴

One ESPR obligation for clothing and footwear does not wait for the passport.

Since 19 July 2026, large businesses in the EU may not destroy unsold apparel, clothing accessories or footwear listed in Annex VII of ESPR, which includes articles of apparel of leather. Medium-sized businesses follow from 19 July 2030; micro and small businesses are exempt.¹

Large businesses that discard unsold consumer products must also disclose how many, why, and what share went to reuse, recycling, recovery or disposal. Medium-sized businesses follow from 19 July 2030; micro and small enterprises are exempt.¹

The textile act is still to be adopted, and its passport is expected to carry garment data such as fiber composition, origin and care instructions. What Vera does today is the part a passport is built on.³

For a brand, the useful work before 2027 is the part no act will change: deciding where identity lives on each garment, and starting the per-item record from the day it is made, so a product sold today already has a history when the rules arrive.

Vera provides the item-level identity and lifecycle record a Digital Product Passport is built on: the tag on the product, and a record of every transfer, scan and resale.