First European Standards for the Digital Product Passport Published

On 27 May 2026, CEN and CENELEC published the first-ever European standards supporting the EU Digital Product Passport (DPP) framework under ESPR (EU) 2024/1781. Developed by the joint technical committee CEN-CLC/JTC 24 "Digital Product Passport: Framework and System", the package covers the core technical infrastructure required for a consistent and interoperable DPP rollout across Europe.
The first set of published standards includes:

•  EN 18216:2026 Digital Product Passport: Data exchange protocols
• EN 18219:2026 Digital Product Passport: Unique identifiers
• EN 18220:2026 Digital Product Passport: Data carriers
• EN 18221:2026 Digital Product Passport: Data storage, archiving, and data persistence
• EN 18222:2026 Digital Product Passport: Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for lifecycle management and searchability
• EN 18223:2026 Digital Product Passport: System interoperability

The standards were formally requested by the European Commission under Standardisation Request M/604. Once cited in the Official Journal of the European Union, they may provide presumption of conformity with ESPR when correctly applied. That citation has not yet taken place yet. 

Two additional standards requested by the Commission are currently under approval and expected to be published in September 2026: FprEN 18239 covering access rights management, information system security, and business confidentiality, and a second standard still under review.

For companies planning their DPP implementation, this package defines the technical baseline: how product data must be structured, exchanged, identified, stored, and accessed across systems and supply chains. Building DPP infrastructure in line with these standards now reduces the risk of costly rework once sector-specific delegated acts under ESPR enter into force. The full list of published standards is available on the CEN-CENELEC website.