Who Is Legally Responsible for the Battery Passport?
The battery passport is not the manufacturer's responsibility: it belongs to the economic operator placing the battery on the Union market. Article 77(4) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 names that party unambiguously, and its identity is itself a mandatory passport data point — number 2. Depending on the case, it can be the manufacturer, the importer, a distributor selling under its own brand, or the operator putting a refurbished battery back into service.
What does Article 77(4) say?
"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."
Three distinct obligations sit in that sentence: accuracy, completeness, currency. The third is the most demanding: it turns the passport into a living record to be maintained across the battery's whole life, not a project deliverable.
Who is the "economic operator"?
Article 3 defines it broadly: "the manufacturer, the authorised representative, the importer, the distributor or the fulfilment service provider or any other natural or legal person who is subject to obligations in relation to the manufacture, preparation for re-use, preparation for repurposing, repurposing or remanufacturing of batteries, the making available or the placing of batteries on the market, including online".
The Regulation then sets out obligations per role:
| Role | Article | Position on the passport |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Art. 38 | Responsible where it places the battery on the Union market itself |
| Supplier of battery cells and modules | Art. 39 | Supplies data to the responsible party, without being responsible for the passport |
| Authorised representative | Art. 40 | Acts under a written mandate from the manufacturer |
| Importer | Art. 41 | Responsible where the manufacturer is established outside the Union |
| Distributor | Art. 42 | Must act with due care; becomes responsible in the Article 44 cases |
| Fulfilment service provider | Art. 43 | Own obligations for the batteries it handles |
The Article 44 trap: becoming a manufacturer without noticing
Article 44 treats an importer or distributor as a manufacturer, with all the obligations of Article 38, in three cases:
- 01.the battery is placed on the market or put into service under its own name or trademark;
- 02.it modifies a battery already on the market in a way that could affect compliance;
- 03.it changes the purpose of that battery.
The first case is the most common and the most underestimated: a brand that has its packs built by a third party and sells them under its own name is legally the manufacturer, and therefore responsible for the battery passport of every unit.
Delegating execution without delegating responsibility
The Regulation explicitly organises technical subcontracting — and bounds it.
- •Article 77(4): the operator may give written authorisation to another operator to act on its behalf.
- •Article 78(c): passport data is stored by the economic operator responsible under Article 77(4) or (7), or by operators authorised to act on its behalf.
- •Article 78(d): those authorised operators may not sell, re-use or process the data, in whole or in part, beyond what is necessary for the provision of the relevant storing or processing services.
- •Article 78(e): the passport must remain available after the responsible economic operator ceases to exist or ceases its activity in the Union.
Together these four provisions amount to a specification for choosing a provider: a written mandate, a ban on monetising the data, and passport persistence independent of the operator's existence — and therefore, a fortiori, independent of the term of a software contract.
The chain of responsibility over time
| Battery life stage | Party responsible for the passport | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| First placing on the market | The economic operator placing the battery on the market or putting it into service | Art. 77(4) |
| Preparation for re-use, repurposing, remanufacturing | The operator placing it back on the market — with a new passport linked to the original | Art. 77(7) |
| Battery becomes waste | The producer, the producer responsibility organisation, or the selected waste management operator | Art. 77(7) |
| After recycling | Nobody: the passport ceases to exist | Art. 77(8) |
The handover in Article 77(7) is probably the most structuring provision for the second-life industry: it creates a genealogy of passports, each new life producing a record linked to the previous one rather than a fresh record.
The responsible party is itself a passport data point
The Commission guidance of 15 August 2026 places second among its 71 data points: "Identity of who is registering and/or is responsible for the battery passport", legal source Article 77(3). It is mandatory for all three categories from 18 February 2027, and it sits in the public access tier.
In other words, "who is responsible?" is not only an internal organisational question: the answer is published in the passport, readable by anyone scanning the QR code.
In short
Responsibility for the battery passport follows placing on the market, not manufacturing. It can shift to an importer, to a distributor that applies its own brand under Article 44, then to a second-life operator and finally to a waste management operator. It can be executed by a provider under written mandate, but never transferred to one — and the Regulation forbids that provider from exploiting the data beyond the service rendered, while requiring the passport to outlive the responsible operator.
Arianee runs an open DPP infrastructure designed so that passports persist independently of the contract and the data stays the brand's. See our Battery Pass page, our analysis of the DPP service provider status, or request a demo.
Sources: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Articles 3, 38 to 44, 77 and 78 — consolidated text of 31 July 2025 (EUR-Lex) · Guidance Document: Digital Batteries Passport – data points by category, v2.0, 15 August 2026 (European Commission).
Are you ready for the EU DPP Registry?
Assess your DPP compliance in 10 questions — instant personalised result.
Take action
Discover how to implement your Digital Product Passport in compliance with European regulations.
Request a demo