What does the ESPR change for the furniture sector?

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 primarily describes the playing field — which types of products can fall under it, what the objective is, how the rules are developed — and that the concrete obligations per product group are filled in later. For furniture this is done in a delegated act, which has not yet been published. What can be said now is which direction it is going and what that means in practice for a company that manufactures, imports or fits out furniture.

Determine whether your products fall under the regulation

Article 1 of the ESPR describes the subject matter and scope: the regulation applies in principle to physical goods placed on the market or put into use, with a number of exceptions. Furniture is not separately mentioned as a category that falls outside the scope, but that does not mean that every piece of furniture or every characteristic of it will be subject to requirements in future. For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this mainly means: determining which part of the assortment is likely to be affected, once the product group-specific rules are known. An overview of what is likely to fall under this and what is not can be found on the page about which products from the furniture industry fall under the ESPR.

Distinguish between types of furniture

Not every piece of furniture is treated in the same way. Furniture that is custom-made for a specific project, or that is built into a building, raises different questions than standard series that come to market in serial production. For project furnishers and custom manufacturers it is useful to look at the guidance on custom-made and project furnishings, and for companies that supply kitchens, cabinets or other built-in elements, at the question of whether built-in furniture falls under the Construction Products Regulation or under the ESPR . This distinction determines which regime applies, and that is not self-evident in all cases.

Take the digital product passport into account

One of the instruments introduced by the ESPR is the digital product passport: a structured collection of data about a product, which is accessible via a data carrier (usually a QR code). For furniture manufacturers and importers, this means that data that is now often scattered — in purchasing files, technical drawings, certificates from suppliers — will at some point need to be bundled and disclosed in a fixed manner. What exactly goes into it has not yet been determined, but a first picture of the direction can be found on the page about which data will be included in the product passport for furniture . For a company that does not yet have a central place where product data come together, this is practically the biggest change: not so much a new obligation in itself, but a different way of organizing data that will be needed in the long term.

Know who is allowed to view which data

Part of the data in a product passport is intended for the consumer or user, another part for supervisory authorities, and yet another part may remain limited to the supply chain. For companies that are sensitive about sharing formulations, composition of materials or supplier information, it is advisable to follow how this distinction is being worked out. The pages about who is allowed to view which data from the product passport and about whether or not to make business-sensitive data public provide a first direction on this.

Where things go wrong in practice

In practice, most problems do not arise from major, fundamental questions, but from assumptions that are not quite correct.

A first scenario: a manufacturer assumes that the rules only become relevant once the delegated act is in place, and therefore postpones internal investigation. Data on materials, origin and composition of components are then not recorded, even though that information often has to come from the supplier or from an earlier production run — retrospectively, it is more difficult to reconstruct than planned.

A second scenario: an importer assumes that responsibilities remain with the manufacturer in the country of origin, while the party placing the product on the EU market often receives its own role in this type of legislation.

A third scenario: a project furnisher thinks that custom-made work automatically falls outside the scope, without checking. Custom-made and mass production are not necessarily treated the same way, but "made to order" is not a free pass in itself.

A fourth scenario: a company assumes that only the end product is relevant, and does not collect data on underlying materials or components from suppliers. As soon as a product passport asks for data on composition or origin, that information is missing anyway.

A fifth scenario: internal responsibility is not assigned anywhere. No one within the company monitors developments around the delegated act, so that publication goes unnoticed and any lead time that exists is not used.

What you can put in order now

Even without the delegated act already in place, a number of things can be organized now:

• An overview of the assortment, divided by product group, so that once the rules become concrete it can be quickly determined which products are affected — see also which products from the furniture industry fall under the ESPR.
• A file per product line with known material composition, origin of raw materials and components used from suppliers.
• Agreements with suppliers on the supply of data that can already be requested, so that these do not have to be derived afterwards.
• An internal assignment of who monitors developments around when the product passport becomes mandatory for furniture and signals when there is news.
• An initial inventory of which data already exists somewhere in the organization (drawings, certificates, safety data sheets) and where it is currently stored.
• For smaller companies: a check of the assumptions on the page on whether the product passport also applies to small businesses, so that expectations about your own position are correct.

This type of preliminary work does not change the obligations themselves, but ensures that the process following publication of the delegated act does not become a search for data that could have been available in principle.