Digital Product Passport Glossary: 25 Key Terms

EU texts on the Digital Product Passport mix legal jargon, technical vocabulary and acronyms. Here are the 25 terms you need, grouped by theme, defined in plain English.

The regulatory texts

ESPR — Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. The European framework that makes the DPP mandatory. See What is the ESPR?

Delegated act — Implementing text adopted by the Commission to specify ESPR requirements for a product category (textiles, steel…). It sets the exact passport data and the deadlines.

Battery Regulation (2023/1542) — Standalone text mandating the battery passport from February 2027.

WEEE — Directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment. Imposes collection and end-of-life information duties.

AGEC — The French anti-waste and circular economy law (2020). A DPP forerunner with its environmental information obligations. See Which regulations require a Digital Product Passport?

CSRD — Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Creates no product passport but consumes the same data.

The technical architecture

DPP (Digital Product Passport) — The structured digital record documenting a product's identity, composition and circularity. Full definition here.

UPI (Unique Product Identifier) — The unique identifier assigned to the item, batch or model — the passport's entry key.

Data carrier — The physical medium carrying the identifier: QR code, NFC chip, digital watermark. Not to be confused with the passport itself — see DPP vs QR code vs label. At Arianee, it is applied in the factory, at production time — including in China.

EU DPP registry — Central database operated by the Commission (Article 13 ESPR, expected July 2026): it stores identifiers and references service providers, without hosting product data.

DPP service provider — Provider authorised to operate passports on behalf of manufacturers: hosting, integrations, semantic compliance, interoperability. A category formalised by the implementing regulation — Arianee is one.

Granularity (model / batch / item) — The level at which the passport is issued: per model, per production batch or per individual unit.

Interoperability — The ability of passports to be read and exchanged across systems, sectors and Member States, without vendor lock-in.

Data and its governance

Essential / strongly recommended / voluntary data — The Commission's three-tier data classification: mandatory, strongly recommended, voluntary. Details in What data goes into a DPP?

Access tiers — Differentiated consultation regimes: consumer, professional repairer, recycler, upstream supplier, market surveillance authority.

Core DPP — The immutable layer of the passport: data declared by the manufacturer when placing the product on the market.

Life-cycle Log — The product's event journal (repairs, refurbishment, transfers), append-only and cryptographically signed. This is the architecture Arianee has operated since 2018.

SVHC (Substances of Very High Concern) — Chemicals whose presence must be declared in the passport.

Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) — Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, expressed in kg CO2-eq. Mandatory for batteries, among others.

State of Health (SoH) — Dynamic battery data: remaining capacity versus rated capacity.

The actors

Economic operator — Generic EU law term: manufacturer, importer, distributor, authorised representative — any company in the market placement chain.

Party placing on the market — The legal owner of the DPP obligation: the manufacturer for EU-made products, the importer for products made elsewhere.

Market surveillance authority — National administration in charge of compliance checks (customs, consumer protection agencies).

Producer responsibility organisation (PRO) — Non-profit structure organising product end-of-life on behalf of producers (EPR schemes). A natural consumer of DPP data.

JRC (Joint Research Centre) — The Commission's science service, author of the reference methodology on DPP data. See our breakdown of report JRC145830.

Going further

This glossary covers the core vocabulary. To put it into practice: our complete ESPR & DPP guide, the regulatory timeline and the DPP FAQ.