CIRCULARITY GUIDE
Second-Hand, Resale and Refurbished Fashion: Does the Digital Product Passport Apply?
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, provides that "products can only be placed on the market or put into service if a digital product passport is available in accordance with the applicable delegated acts adopted pursuant to Article 4 and with Articles 10 and 11" (Article 9(1)). It also speaks to the second-hand sector directly: recital 17 says that second-hand products originating from within the Union "are not new products". This guide sets out what the legal texts, the Commission's pages and JRC studies say about resale, refurbishment and remanufacturing, and where they say nothing.
These rules attach to products covered by an ESPR delegated act. No adoption date has been fixed for the textile (apparel) delegated act. The Commission's Digital Product Passport pages list adoption for Q3–Q4 2027 (DPP timeline, together with aluminium and tyres) and for Q4 2027 (textile page), both marked indicative. Sources: EU legal texts, Commission pages and JRC studies, listed below.
Art. 9(1)
A product can only be placed on the market if a digital product passport is available under the applicable delegated act.
Recital 17
Second-hand products originating from within the Union “are not new products.”
Remanufactured = new
That same recital draws a line at remanufacturing: a remanufactured product is considered new; if it falls within the scope of a delegated act, the full ecodesign and passport requirements apply again, from scratch.
1. What "placing on the market" means
The ESPR defines "placing on the market" as "the first making available of a product on the Union market" (Article 2(40)). "Making available on the market" is "any supply of a product for distribution, consumption or use on the Union market in the course of a commercial activity, whether in return for payment or free of charge" (Article 2(39)). The Commission's FAQ applies the same wording to the passport: it "must be active and registered when a product is placed on the EU market, i.e. first made available on the EU market" (question 11).
2. What the ESPR says about second-hand products
Recital 17 addresses the point directly: "Second-hand products, in particular products that undergo refurbishment or repair, originating from within the Union are not new products and they can circulate within the internal market without needing to comply with delegated acts setting ecodesign requirements that have entered into force after their placing on the market." The recital then draws a line at remanufacturing: "remanufactured products are considered new products and they will be subject to ecodesign requirements if they fall within the scope of a delegated act."
3. Refurbishment, remanufacturing and modification
The ESPR defines "refurbishment" as "actions carried out to prepare, clean, test, service and, where necessary, repair a product or a discarded product in order to restore its performance or functionality within the intended use and range of performance originally conceived at the design stage at the time of the placing of the product on the market" (Article 2(18)). "Remanufacturing" is "actions through which a new product is produced from objects that are waste, products or components and through which at least one change is made that substantially affects the safety, performance, purpose or type of the product" (Article 2(16)).
On modification, Article 34 provides that importers or distributors "shall be considered manufacturers" where they "modify such a product already placed on the market in a way that affects compliance with the requirements set out in the applicable delegated acts" (point (b)).
Second-hand or refurbished
Not a new product. Can keep circulating without complying with delegated acts that entered into force after it was first placed on the market.
ESPR Recital 17Remanufactured
Considered a new product. If it falls within a delegated act's scope, the full ecodesign and passport requirements apply again, from scratch.
ESPR Recital 17 / Art. 2(16)Modified by an importer or distributor
Where the modification affects compliance with the applicable delegated act's requirements, that party is treated as the legal manufacturer for the product.
ESPR Art. 34(b)Accessed by a refurbisher or repairer
Free of charge and easy access to the existing passport, based on the access rights set out in the applicable delegated act — not a duty to create a new one.
ESPR Art. 11(b)4. Resellers, refurbishers and access to the passport
A dealer is "a distributor or any other natural or legal person that offers products for sale, hire or hire purchase, or that displays products, to end users in the course of a commercial activity, including through distance selling; and includes any natural or legal person that puts a product into service in the course of a commercial activity" (Article 2(55)). For products covered by a delegated act, dealers must "ensure that the digital product passport is easily accessible for customers and potential customers, including in the event of distance selling" (Article 31(2)).
Repairers and refurbishers appear on the access side of the passport. Article 11, point (b), gives "professional repairers, independent operators, refurbishers, remanufacturers, recyclers" and other listed actors "free of charge and easy access to the digital product passport based on their respective access rights set out in the applicable delegated act adopted pursuant to Article 4". The delegated act also sets "the period during which the digital product passport is to remain available, which shall correspond to at least the expected lifetime of a specific product" (Article 9(2), point (i)).
5. What the Commission says
The Commission's textile page says that, depending on the final requirements of the delegated act, information on the DPP may include "Information relevant to reuse, resale, disassembly, refurbishment and disposal at end-of-life and recycling", and that the exact requirements "will be defined through the relevant delegated acts and supporting technical specifications". On who is covered, it states: "DPP requirements will apply primarily to economic operators placing textile apparel products on the EU market or putting them into service in EU territory". The DPP FAQ describes, "if those data points are required by the product-specific delegated act", access for professional repairers and refurbishers to items such as "detailed disassembly instructions" (question 3).
The Commission's Blue Guide on the implementation of EU product rules (2022/C 247/01) is a general notice that predates the ESPR and does not mention it. For Union harmonisation legislation generally, it states: "Union harmonisation legislation applies to products outside the Union when they are made available on the Union market for the first time; not only to newly manufactured products but also to used and second-hand products, including products resulting from the preparation for re-use of electrical or electronic waste, but not to such products already on the EU market" (section 2.5).
6. What the JRC says
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) posts on its Product Bureau's textile documents page a study titled Study on DPP content for textile apparel products under ESPR (González-Torres and Arcipowska, listed with the date 13 May 2026). It is an external study report prepared for the JRC; it states that its contents "do not necessarily reflect the position or opinion of the European Commission", and the posted file carries a DRAFT watermark.
On distributors, the study says: "Distributors make products available on the market after those products have been placed thereon by the manufacturer or importer. Their role consists in verifying the access to the DPP and the presence of information as required by the delegated act. Second-hand sellers belong to this category." (Section 9.3.1, p. 70). Its use case UC11 has manufacturers provide second-hand sellers with product data through the DPP, aiming at "allowing resellers access to extensive product data shared by the manufacturer through the DPP" (Section 6.1.3, p. 38), and the annex version of that use case says: "Sellers may update the DPP to reflect changes in ownership or condition as products are resold, ensuring information remains current and accurate" (Annex 1, p. 88).
For repurposed or remanufactured garments, the study describes the Battery Regulation's rule that a new passport linked to the original is required when the transformed product is placed on the market, and adds: "If the governance principle under this Regulation is considered to offer a useful parallel for the ESPR context, the responsibility for the DPP would be transferred to the operator placing that repurposed or remanufactured garment on the market" (Section 9.3.1, p. 71). It leaves customised and upcycled textile apparel to a later step: those aspects "will be addressed in the impact assessment that will follow the preparatory study in the policy-making process" (Section 4.2, p. 23). It also gives repair or refurbishment operations and change of ownership as examples of update triggers that delegated acts may specify (Section 2.1.4.3, p. 13).
A second JRC report, Methodology for defining data requirements for the Digital Product Passport under the ESPR framework (JRC145830, 2026), carries the same disclaimer and includes generic use cases in which a refurbisher receives a used or damaged product and accesses its passport, with the refurbisher adding a refurbishing event to the DPP, and in which a consumer in a second-hand store scans a product's QR code to access its DPP (Tables 28 and 29, pp. 83–84).
7. What the texts say, by situation
| Situation | What the ESPR text says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Second-hand or refurbished product originating from within the Union | Not a new product; can circulate without complying with delegated acts that entered into force after its placing on the market | ESPR recital 17 |
| Remanufactured product | Considered a new product; subject to ecodesign requirements if within the scope of a delegated act | ESPR recital 17; Art. 2(16) |
| Importer or distributor that modifies a product already placed on the market | Considered a manufacturer where the modification affects compliance with the applicable delegated acts | ESPR Art. 34, point (b) |
| Refurbisher, remanufacturer, professional repairer | Free of charge and easy access to the passport, based on the access rights in the delegated act | ESPR Art. 11, point (b) |
8. Reading these rules together
Recital 17 speaks of "delegated acts setting ecodesign requirements". An ecodesign requirement is "a performance requirement or an information requirement" (Article 2(7)), and the information requirements must include, "as a minimum", requirements related to the digital product passport (Article 7(2), point (a)), except where a delegated act contains horizontal ecodesign requirements. Read together, a garment of Union origin that was first placed on the market before a textile delegated act entered into force can be resold without a passport under that act. The recital refers to acts "that have entered into force after their placing on the market"; it does not use the date of application, which under Article 4(4) is, as a rule, at least 18 months after entry into force, and it does not address a garment first placed on the market after the act applies.
For a garment first placed on the market after the act applies, the passport exists from that first placing on the market (Article 9(1)) and stays available for at least the expected lifetime of the product (Article 9(2), point (i)). A commercial reseller matches the definition of a dealer (Article 2(55)), and the definition of making available is not limited to new products (Article 2(39)). Recital 17 deals with acts that entered into force after the placing on the market, not with the seller-side duties of distributors and dealers in Articles 30 and 31. The ESPR text and the Commission pages reviewed do not say how those articles apply to second-hand sales of a product that was placed on the market with a passport; the JRC study in section 6 places second-hand sellers among distributors, without speaking for the Commission.
A used garment coming from outside the Union is not covered by the wording of recital 17, which speaks of products "originating from within the Union". An importer is a person that "places a product from a third country on the Union market" (Article 2(44)), and placing on the market is the first making available on the Union market (Article 2(40)). The Blue Guide states the same first-entry principle, but it does not mention the ESPR, and the ESPR texts reviewed do not spell out how a used garment from a third country is handled.
No adoption date has been fixed for the textile (apparel) delegated act. The Commission's textile page lists "Q4 2027: Planned adoption of the ESPR Delegated Act for textiles" and its DPP page lists Q3–Q4 2027 for the adoption of the ESPR delegated acts for textiles, aluminium and tyres, with a transition period "of at least 18 months" after adoption; both entries are marked indicative. Article 4(4) provides that a delegated act's date of application shall not be earlier than 18 months from its entry into force, except in "duly justified" cases; for an act adopted in the second half of 2027 that means 2029 at the earliest (our calculation, not a date the Commission has published). The ESPR text and the Commission pages reviewed do not yet specify what the textile passport will contain about resale or refurbishment, or who will update it after a refurbishment; the JRC material in section 6 consists of recommendations.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products (ESPR). Cited: Articles 2(7), 2(16), 2(18), 2(39), 2(40), 2(44), 2(55), 4(4), 7(2), 9(1), 9(2), 11, 30, 31, 34; recital 17.
- Commission Notice: The "Blue Guide" on the implementation of EU product rules 2022 (2022/C 247/01, OJ C 247, 29.6.2022). Cited: section 2.5.
- European Commission, Digital Product Passport: indicative DPP timeline.
- European Commission, Frequently Asked Questions on the Digital Product Passport (DPP): questions 3 and 11.
- European Commission, Textile Apparel and the Digital Product Passport (DPP).
- Joint Research Centre (JRC), Product Bureau, textile products, Documents related to the Preparatory Study: Study on DPP content for textile apparel products under ESPR (González-Torres, M., Arcipowska, A., 2026; file Textiles_DPP_20260513.pdf, listed with the date 2026-05-13). Cited: Sections 2.1.4.3, 4.2, 6.1.3 and 9.3.1; Annex 1 (use case UC11).
- Chawla, K., Chirvasuta, T., Wolf, M.-A., Wolf, K., Rongen, S. et al., Methodology for defining data requirements for the Digital Product Passport under the ESPR framework, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2026 (JRC145830, EUR 40660). Cited: Tables 28 and 29.
All sources were accessed and verified directly on EUR-Lex, the European Commission's Digital Product Passport pages and the Joint Research Centre's Product Bureau site on 26 September 2026; the statements on the timing of adoption of the textile (apparel) delegated act were re-checked against the Commission's Digital Product Passport pages on 13 October 2026. This is general information, not legal, financial or investment advice.
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