Does the digital product passport apply to my furniture?

What you concretely have to do

What is expected of you

The ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) is a framework regulation. This means that the regulation itself describes the playing field, but the precise obligations for a product group — such as furniture — only apply once a delegated act has been adopted for it. Article 1 of the ESPR makes clear that the regulation can apply to virtually all physical goods placed on the market, with a number of specifically named exceptions. Furniture is not among those exceptions, and is also mentioned in the preparatory documents of the European Commission as one of the product groups to be regulated. More on the scope of the regulation is on the page which products of the furniture industry fall under the ESPR.

Know whether your products will fall under the scheme

For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this means above all: monitor, do not yet fully document. As long as the delegated act for furniture has not been published, it is not certain which exact product categories, materials or applications fall within or outside the scheme. A company that manufactures office furniture, seating furniture or bespoke cabinets should regularly check whether its own product category is mentioned in the act. The page what is a delegated act and why does it determine what I have to do explains why that document, and not the ESPR itself, ultimately determines the outcome.

Determine whether your type of furniture or project counts

Some situations are less straightforward than others. Bespoke furniture, project furnishing and built-in furniture are examples where it is not automatically clear whether, and how, the regulation applies. Article 9 of the ESPR describes what a digital product passport must contain materially once it becomes mandatory for a product group, but says nothing about whether a one-off manufactured piece of furniture for a specific project falls into the same category as a series product. For those who work to measure, the page does the product passport also apply to bespoke furniture is a logical follow-up. For furniture that becomes a permanent part of a building — think of fitted cabinets or fitted kitchens — there is also the question of whether the Construction Products Regulation or the ESPR is the applicable framework; that distinction is described on the page do built-in furniture fall under the Construction Products Regulation or the ESPR.

Take company size into account

The ESPR makes no blanket exception for small businesses in the text of Article 1. It is conceivable that a delegated act for a specific product group contains transitional periods or lighter obligations for smaller market participants — this has not yet been determined for furniture. Companies that consider themselves small should therefore not assume in advance that the regulation will skip them. The page does the product passport also apply to small businesses goes further on this.

Where things go wrong in practice

A first situation that often occurs: a company assumes that the passport only applies to "large manufacturers", and stops investigating further once the word "regulation" is mentioned. Without clarity on its own product category in the delegated act, that assumption cannot be substantiated.

A second situation: an importer of furniture assumes that the obligation only lies with the manufacturer in the country of origin, and not with the person who places the product on the EU market. Article 1 of the ESPR is precisely directed at products placed on the EU market, regardless of where they are manufactured.

A third situation: a project furnisher thinks that bespoke work is by definition outside the regulation, because it is a unique piece and not a series product. Whether that is the case depends on how the delegated act will define bespoke work — an assumption made in advance would be premature.

A fourth situation: a manufacturer of built-in furniture relies on the building regulations or the Construction Products Regulation without checking whether the specific component — for example, a freestanding cabinet element that is only fixed during assembly — does not nevertheless fall as furniture within the ESPR.

A fifth situation: a company waits passively for 'Brussels to say something', without registering which product lines it carries and which materials are incorporated in them. When the delegated act does arrive, that information must then still be provided — often under time pressure.

What you can put in order now

• An overview of the company's own product lines, with the materials used per line, their origin and any variants — this is the starting point once it becomes clear which categories the delegated act mentions.
• A note on the status of projects and bespoke orders: which orders are one-off, which are repeated in small series.
• An established method for tracking new publications on the ESPR, for example by periodically consulting the page when does the product passport become mandatory for furniture to consult.
• A list of products that may fall under a different regime (such as construction products), with the reason why, so that this assessment does not have to be made from scratch again later.
• Contact details and agreements with suppliers on material information, so that data on composition do not have to be requested only afterwards.
• An internal point of contact or person responsible who monitors when the delegated act for furniture is published and what what changes does the ESPR bring for the furniture industry it reports on.

These records form no part of the obligation itself — the obligation does not yet exist in elaborate form for furniture — but they ensure that a company does not start from zero at the moment when the regulation does become concrete.