The complete guide to the EU Battery Regulation

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 is the most far-reaching battery law in the world, and the digital battery passport sits at its heart. This guide is the version we wish existed when we started: every date checked against EUR-Lex, every claim carrying a CELEX or article reference, and every overdue act named as overdue rather than quietly rounded up into a clean timeline.

That last part matters more than it sounds. A large share of what is published about this Regulation is out of date, and a meaningful share was never right. The due-diligence obligation has already slipped two years. No carbon-footprint act exists at all. Two of the standards most commonly cited for digital product passports do not exist. Where this guide differs from something you read elsewhere, the citation is there so you can check who is wrong.

What is the EU Battery Regulation?

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 — the EU Battery Regulation — replaced the 2006 Batteries Directive and became the single rulebook for batteries placed on the EU market. Because it is a regulation rather than a directive, it applies directly in every Member State with no transposition step: the same obligations bite everywhere, on the same day.

Its ambition is a circular battery economy — batteries that are lower-carbon to make, responsibly sourced, longer-lived, and easier to repair, repurpose and recycle. To make that measurable rather than aspirational, the Regulation attaches data obligations to the battery itself. The digital battery passport is how that data travels.

In one line: the Regulation turns a battery's sustainability record into a legal condition of selling it — and the passport is the container for that record.

The Regulation does not stand alone. It is stitched into the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, which owns the EU-wide digital product passport registry. Article 77(10) of the Batteries Regulation — a paragraph added by corrigendum and absent from the 2023 Official Journal PDF most people still work from — requires the economic operator to upload the battery's unique identifier into the registry established by Article 13(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. If your reading of the passport obligation stops at the QR code, you are missing a filing step.

Where the consolidated text lives

Work from the consolidated version, not the original OJ text: CELEX 02023R1542-20250731. It carries the corrigenda and the 2025 amendment. The original PDF does not, and the difference is not cosmetic — Article 77(10) is only in the consolidated text.

Who does the battery passport apply to?

Article 77(1) is short enough to quote in full:

"From 18 February 2027 each LMT battery, each industrial battery with a capacity greater than 2 kWh and each electric vehicle battery placed on the market or put into service shall have an electronic record ('battery passport')."

So three categories, and only three:

• Electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
• Light means of transport (LMT) batteries — e-bikes, e-scooters and similar.
• Industrial batteries with a capacity greater than 2 kWh, including stationary storage.

SLI batteries (starting, lighting, ignition) and portable batteries are outside the passport obligation. That omission is deliberate and worth stating affirmatively, because it is the single most common reader question.

If you manufacture, import or place any of the three covered categories on the EU market, you carry the obligation — and so, in practice, does everyone upstream who feeds data into it. Article 77(4) puts the responsibility precisely:

"The economic operator placing the battery on the market shall ensure that the information in the battery passport is accurate, complete and up to date. It may give written authorisation to any other operator to act on its behalf."

Authorisation delegates the work. It does not delegate the liability.

What counts as an "industrial battery"?

This is where a lot of published guidance is wrong, in a direction that under-scopes the category. Article 3(1)(13) defines an industrial battery as one:

"specifically designed for industrial uses, intended for industrial uses after having been subject to preparation for repurposing or repurposing, or any other battery that weighs more than 5 kg and that is neither an electric vehicle battery, an LMT battery, nor an SLI battery"

Two limbs, not one. The purpose limb — designed for industrial use, or repurposed for it — carries no weight threshold at all. A 3 kg battery specifically designed for industrial use is an industrial battery. The >5 kg figure belongs only to the residual catch-all limb.

And capacity plays no part in the definition. The "2 kWh" figure is the obligation trigger in Article 77(1) (and the recycled-content trigger in Article 8) — not part of what makes a battery "industrial". If you have been screening your portfolio by weight, re-screen it by purpose.

Second life counts as a new placing on the market

Giving a used battery a second life counts as placing a new battery on the market. A repurposed EV pack destined for stationary storage needs its own passport, built on the history of the original — which is exactly why the identifier and the data model have to be interoperable across operators and across years.

What is a battery passport, technically?

An electronic record, unique to each individual battery, reachable through a data carrier — in practice a QR code — printed or etched on the product. Scan it and you resolve to a live record of that battery's identity and status.

Two properties of that record are set out in the operative text and are worth quoting, because they constrain vendor choice directly. Article 77(5):

"All information included in the battery passport shall be based on open standards and be in an interoperable format, transferable through an open interoperable data exchange network without vendor lock-in, machine-readable, structured and searchable, in accordance with the essential requirements laid down in Article 78."

"Vendor lock-in" is not our gloss. It appears literally in the operative text, in both the original and consolidated versions. A passport platform that cannot export your record into someone else's system is not a compliant passport platform.

Article 78(e) goes further:

"the battery passport shall remain available after the economic operator responsible for the fulfilment of the obligations under Article 77(4) or (7) ceases to exist or ceases its activity in the Union"

Note the honest gap here: Article 78 prescribes the outcome but sets no mechanism, custodian, escrow arrangement or duration for achieving it. Nothing in the Regulation tells you who holds the record after your supplier is wound up. That is unresolved in the legislation, and any vendor telling you their product "satisfies Article 78(e)" is describing a commercial promise, not a legal one.

Elsewhere in the same article: Article 78(a) requires full interoperability with other digital product passports required by EU ecodesign law; Article 78(c)–(d) require the data to be stored by the responsible operator or an authorised agent, and bar those agents from selling or re-using the data beyond providing the service.

Finally, Article 77(8): "A battery passport shall cease to exist after the battery has been recycled." The passport has a defined end of life, and the record is not meant to outlive the asset.

What data goes in the battery passport?

Annex XIII sets out what the passport must carry, across six themes: identification; carbon footprint; materials and composition, including recycled content of cobalt, lithium, nickel and lead; supply-chain due diligence; performance and durability; and circularity, including dismantling information and live state of health.

Some of those fields are static and known at manufacture. Others — state of health above all — change across the battery's life, and the passport is expected to stay accurate and resolvable for the whole of it. A passport is not a one-time PDF.

Our Annex XIII reference breaks down every field and its access tier.

Carbon footprint: the act that does not exist

Here is the single most important thing to understand about the carbon-footprint fields, and the thing most competitor pages get wrong.

As of July 2026, no delegated or implementing act has been adopted under Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542. A query of the EU Publications Office against the instruments based on CELEX 32023R1542 returns three items in total — Delegated Reg. (EU) 2025/606 (legal basis Art. 71(4)), Implementing Reg. (EU) 2025/2289 (Art. 76(5)), and a January 2025 Commission Notice. None has Article 7 as its legal basis.

The real deadlines sit in Article 7(1), fourth subparagraph, and they are on the Commission, not on you:

The EV methodology was published in draft for feedback in April 2024 (Commission initiative 13877, Ares(2024)3131389, 127 responses) and has not been adopted since. A companion initiative, 13878, covers the declaration format.

Two corrections worth carrying:

1. 18 February 2026 is not a Commission deadline. It is the date the declaration obligation would start applying to industrial batteries under Article 7(1), third subparagraph, point (b) — and that provision reads "whichever is the latest". Because no act has entered into force, that obligation has not in fact taken effect.
2. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/606 is not a carbon-footprint act. It is the methodology for recycling efficiency and material recovery under Article 71(4) (CELEX 32025R0606, OJ L, 2025/606, 4.7.2025). It is very frequently miscited as the carbon-footprint act. It is not.

Article 7(2) performance-class acts are also overdue: the EV one was due 18 February 2025 and is unadopted; the industrial one is due 18 August 2026.

Recycled content: real numbers, conditional dates

Article 8 is the recycled-content regime, and it needs stating carefully because one of its dates is not fixed.

The declaration duty (Art. 8(1)) applies from 18 August 2028 or 24 months after the enabling delegated act enters into force, whichever is the latest. That delegated act — the calculation methodology — was due by 18 August 2026 and has not been adopted. Commission initiative 14858 (Ares(2025)7729439, DG ENV, legal basis Article 8(1)) is still pre-draft, with adoption only planned for Q3 2026. Because of the "whichever is the latest" wording, every month of delay pushes 2028 back. Treat "18 August 2028" as a floor, not a date.

Minimum shares (Art. 8(2)), from 18 August 2031 — industrial batteries above 2 kWh (except exclusively external storage), EV and SLI batteries:

The LMT caveat, in both directions. LMT batteries are outside the 2031 shares — not by an express exclusion, but because Article 8(2) simply does not list them. Their declaration duty starts on 18 August 2033 (Art. 8(1), second subparagraph). But Article 8(3), from 18 August 2036, expressly includes LMT batteries in the higher shares. A page that says "LMT excluded" next to the 2031/2036 pair without that qualification will mislead you into under-planning by five years.

Due diligence: moved to 18 August 2027

Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 July 2025 (OJ L, 2025/1561, 30.7.2025; CELEX 32025R1561), in force 31 July 2025, postponed the Article 48 supply-chain due-diligence obligations from 18 August 2025 to 18 August 2027. It also moved the deadline for the Commission's due-diligence guidelines to 26 July 2026.

One precision point that a regulatory audience will notice: this is not a Commission Delegated Regulation. It is a Regulation of the Parliament and Council adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure — delegated acts cannot amend the application dates of a co-decided basic act this way. If a source calls 2025/1561 a delegated act, treat the rest of that source with suspicion.

Who can see the battery passport data?

Not everything is public. Annex XIII splits the fields into tiers: a public layer anyone can scan, a restricted layer for parties with a legitimate interest — repairers, recyclers, notified bodies — and a full layer for market-surveillance authorities and the Commission. A compliant platform enforces these tiers field by field rather than exposing one flat record.

But the tiers are not yet operable. Article 77(9), first subparagraph:

"By 18 August 2026, the Commission shall adopt implementing acts specifying which persons are to be considered persons with a legitimate interest as referred to in points 2 and 4 respectively of Annex XIII … and to which information listed in those points they shall have access, and to what extent they can download, share, publish and re-use that information."

That act has not been adopted and no draft has been published. Commission initiative 16473 (Ares(2026)568530, DG GROW, legal basis Article 77(9)) is at planning stage with no dates set, and the Commission's own DPP roadmap targets Q4 2026 — after the statutory deadline. Until it lands, the legitimate-interest tier cannot be operationalised: nobody can tell you authoritatively who qualifies.

Do not accept a citation for this obligation. No act number exists. Two instruments circulate as false positives: Implementing Reg. (EU) 2025/2289 (13 Nov 2025) is waste-battery reporting under Art. 76(5), and Reg. (EU) 2026/1778 sits under ESPR. Neither is the Article 77(9) act.

Our compliance guide covers the tiering model in more detail.

The ESPR registry, and Article 77(10)

The hinge between the Batteries Regulation and the wider DPP framework is Article 77(10), the corrigendum paragraph:

"The economic operator placing the battery on the market or putting it into service shall upload the unique identifier in the registry referred to in Article 13(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781."

That registry now has its implementing arrangements. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778 of 16 July 2026 (OJ L, 2026/1778, 17.7.2026; CELEX 32026R1778), in force 6 August 2026, lays down the implementation arrangements for the ESPR digital product passport registry under Article 13 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. Article 1 puts batteries expressly in scope: "(b) batteries covered by Article 77 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542".

Article 7(1) of that Regulation requires Member States to appoint a designated national registry administrator by 18 February 2027 — the same date your passport obligation begins.

Treat Article 77(10) and Reg. 2026/1778 as one practical workflow: minting an identifier is not done until it is in the registry. Anyone working from the 2023 OJ PDF will not see this step at all.

Which standards should I build against?

Six digital product passport standards from CEN/CLC/JTC 24 ("Digital Product Passport – Framework and System", secretariat DIN, under Commission standardisation request M/604) were published in 2026 and presented on 25 June 2026:

The six were cited in the Official Journal by Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736 of 14 July 2026 (CELEX 32026D1736, OJ L series, 15.7.2026).

And here is the part that changes how you should read a conformity claim. That citation is made in support of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 only. Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 appears in the Decision solely in a footnote noting that 2024/1781 amended it. No equivalent citation has been made under the Batteries Regulation — so these standards currently confer no presumption of conformity for battery passports.

State that as an absence rather than as a Commission position: the Decision does not say battery passports get no presumption of conformity. The conclusion follows from the mechanism, because presumption of conformity attaches only to the legislation a standard is cited under.

Practically, that does not make the standards optional. They are still the best available description of what an interoperable passport looks like, and building against them is what makes your data portable. It just means you cannot point at EN 18219 and call yourself presumed conformant under Article 77.

How much secondary legislation actually exists?

Less than almost anyone assumes. Verified against the Publications Office SPARQL endpoint on resource_legal_based_on_resource_legal, the complete set of secondary legislation adopted under Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 is three instruments:

1. Delegated Reg. (EU) 2025/606 — recycling efficiency and material recovery methodology (Art. 71(4)).
2. Implementing Reg. (EU) 2025/2289 of 13 November 2025 — waste-battery reporting formats (Art. 76(5)), CELEX 32025R2289.
3. A Commission Notice of January 2025.

That is it. No carbon-footprint act. No recycled-content methodology. No legitimate-interest act. If a source cites a fourth adopted act under the Batteries Regulation, treat it as wrong until you have the CELEX in hand.

One item in flight and frequently miscited: C(2026)5031 final of 14 July 2026, under Article 11(4), adds wearables, certain toys, wireless food-contact thermometer probes and roof-mounted telematics devices to the portable-battery removability derogations. It is still in the Parliament and Council scrutiny period and has no OJ number — do not cite it as "Regulation (EU) 2026/xxx".

We keep this list current on the regulatory tracker.

How should I prepare for 18 February 2027?

Start now, because the hard part is not the QR code — it is the data, and most of the data comes from other companies.

1. Screen your portfolio by purpose, not by weight

Apply Article 3(1)(13) properly: the design limb has no weight threshold. Then apply the Article 77(1) trigger (LMT, EV, industrial >2 kWh) to decide which of those need a passport. Portfolios screened on the ">5 kg" figure alone are routinely under-scoped.

2. Map your bill of materials to Annex XIII now

Do not wait for the missing delegated acts. The identification, materials, performance and circularity fields are stable in the Annex; the carbon-footprint methodology is what is missing, not the requirement to carry a figure. Map what you can and leave typed gaps where the methodology will land. That converts the eventual act into a migration rather than a rewrite.

3. Treat supplier data as a lead time, not a task

Recycled-content shares and due-diligence evidence live in your suppliers' systems. Those requests take quarters, not sprints. The 18 August 2027 due-diligence date and the 18 August 2031 recycled-content shares both depend on data you do not currently hold.

4. Decide who signs each declaration

Article 77(4) makes the operator placing the battery on the market responsible for accuracy, completeness and currency — and lets that operator authorise someone else in writing to act for it. Write that authorisation down before it matters.

5. Pin your identifier and registry workflow

Every battery needs a globally unique, standards-based identifier that resolves years later for a regulator, a recycler or an owner. Build against EN 18219 and EN 18220, and wire in the Article 77(10) upload to the ESPR registry from the start rather than bolting it on.

6. Test the exit before you sign

Article 77(5) says "without vendor lock-in" and Article 78(e) says the passport must remain available if the operator ceases to exist. Neither has an enforcement mechanism attached. So make it a procurement question: ask for a full machine-readable export of one battery's record, in an open format, and check that a second system can ingest it. That single test tells you more than any compliance datasheet.

7. Prove one line end to end, then scale

Pick one battery line. Take it all the way — bill of materials to schema, supplier declarations to evidence, identifier to registry, record to scan. The second line is an order of magnitude cheaper than the first. That is exactly the path Battery Digital Passport is built to shorten.

The dates, in one table

Overdue as of July 2026: the EV carbon-footprint methodology (due 18 February 2024) and the industrial one (due 18 February 2025).

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Verified against EUR-Lex, the EU Publications Office and CEN-CENELEC on 19 July 2026. EUR-Lex indexing lags by a few days, so an act adopted in the last week may not yet appear. This guide is a plain-English orientation, not legal advice.