ESPR Non-Compliance Penalties for Digital Product Passports

The ESPR does not set a fixed EU-wide fine for Digital Product Passport non-compliance. Article 74 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 requires each Member State to set its own penalties, which must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive and must at least include fines and time-limited exclusion from public procurement.

This sets ESPR apart from GDPR, which sets EU-wide maximum fines of up to €20 million or 4% of total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher (Article 83(5), Regulation (EU) 2016/679). Under ESPR, the penalty a company faces depends on the Member State enforcing it and on eight factors listed in Article 74(2), ranging from the gravity of the infringement to the financial situation of the company responsible. Those factors will look familiar to anyone who has dealt with GDPR enforcement, since both regulations consider the gravity and duration of the breach, whether it was intentional or negligent, and any action taken to remedy it.

Fines are only part of the exposure. A product with a missing or inaccurate passport can be withdrawn or recalled, stopped at customs, or become the subject of a consumer damages claim. This guide covers each of those risks, when they start to apply, and the checks that reduce them.

The legal basis: Article 74

Penalties for ESPR non-compliance are set out in Article 74 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, under Chapter XIV, "Final Provisions." The article requires Member States to lay down their own penalty rules, and those rules have to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. There is no fixed deadline in the article itself for putting those rules in place, only a requirement to notify the Commission once they exist.

Article 74 also sets a minimum enforcement toolkit. Member States must at least be able to impose:

fines
time-limited exclusion from public procurement procedures

Countries can go further than this, but not offer less.

When a national authority actually calculates a penalty, Article 74(2) requires them to weigh eight factors: the gravity and duration of the infringement, whether it was intentional or negligent, the financial situation of the operator, the economic benefit gained from the breach, the environmental damage caused, any remedial action already taken, whether the breach is repeated or a one-off, and any other relevant aggravating or mitigating circumstance. That list matters more than any single fine figure, because it is what actually determines whether a given case lands closer to a warning or closer to a market ban.

What counts as non-compliance

Article 74 doesn't itemise every trigger, but the obligations set elsewhere in the regulation make the common ones clear:

placing a product on the market without a Digital Product Passport once the applicable delegated act requires one
a passport that exists but contains inaccurate, incomplete or outdated data
a data carrier that doesn't resolve, or resolves to the wrong information
failing to provide information or documentation within 15 days of a reasoned request from a national authority, or failing to cooperate on corrective action (Articles 27(10), 29(8) and 30(5))
any behaviour, contractual, commercial, technical or other, that undermines a product's compliance, including software or firmware updates that worsen regulated performance (Article 40)

Partial compliance is still non-compliance. A passport that exists but understates recycled content, or omits a required substance-of-concern entry, carries the same exposure under Article 74 as having no passport at all.

Beyond fines: what enforcement can look like

Article 74(3) sets fines and procurement exclusion as the guaranteed minimum, but the wider regulation gives market surveillance authorities other levers too. A non-compliant product can be withdrawn from the market or recalled. Article 76 adds a separate liability track: if a consumer is harmed by a non-compliant product, the manufacturer is liable first, followed by the importer or authorised representative if the manufacturer sits outside the EU, and the fulfilment service provider as a last resort.

Where the fine amount will differ by country, the operational disruption of a recall or a procurement ban tends not to. That's usually the more immediate cost.

How this compares to the Batteries Regulation

Battery producers work under a separate but structurally similar rule. Article 93 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, also titled "Penalties," required Member States to have their national penalty rules in place and notified to the Commission by 18 August 2025. Unlike Article 74, that deadline is written into the article itself.

The standard is the same wording: effective, proportionate, dissuasive. The two provisions sit in different regulations, with different article numbers and, for batteries, a different compliance clock already running.

What to check now

Article 74(1) requires Member States to notify the Commission of their penalty rules without delay, but it sets no common format or fine range, so the rules will differ from one country to the next. A clearer EU-wide picture is on the way. Under Article 67(1), market surveillance authorities must record the nature and severity of every penalty they impose in the EU's shared market surveillance database.

The Commission then uses that data to publish a report every four years, including indicative benchmarks on the severity of penalties, and the first report is due by 19 July 2028 (Article 67(2) and (3)). Until then, the most useful approach is to treat the eight factors in Article 74(2) as a checklist for reducing exposure before an authority gets involved:

Confirm which delegated act, and which deadline, applies to each product line
Check passport data against the physical product, not just against the template
Keep technical documentation retrievable within the response windows the regulation sets for market surveillance requests
Document any corrective action taken on a known issue, since Article 74(2) treats remediation as a mitigating factor
Track the national transposition status in each country the product is sold in, rather than assuming EU-wide uniformity

FAQs

Is there a fixed fine amount for ESPR non-compliance?
No. Article 74 requires Member States to set penalties that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive, but leaves the specific amounts to national law.

Which article covers ESPR penalties?
Article 74 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, in Chapter XIV.

Is the Batteries Regulation penalty article the same as ESPR's?
No. Batteries fall under Article 93 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, a separate regulation with its own article numbering and its own notification deadline of 18 August 2025.

Can a company be excluded from public procurement for ESPR non-compliance?
Yes. Time-limited exclusion from public procurement is one of the two enforcement measures Article 74(3) explicitly requires Member States to be able to impose.