Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, is the Union framework for design and information rules on physical goods. It has been in force since 18 July 2024. Textiles and footwear sit inside that framework, but the regulation does not yet say which durability, recycled-content or data requirements a particular garment must meet. Those product rules will come later, in delegated acts, one product group at a time. Until a textile act applies, the ESPR is already law as a framework, and the textile-specific duties are still ahead.

The Commission’s page on textiles describes an indicative timeline and says it can change. Adoption of the textile delegated act is planned for the fourth quarter of 2027. A wider Commission page places the acts for textiles, aluminium and tyres in the third to fourth quarter of 2027. That is the planned year of the act, not the first year the product rules apply. After adoption, companies have a transition of at least 18 months, so textile requirements are expected around 2029. Summaries that treated 2027 as a start date were talking about the year the act is planned.

Two duties in the same regulation do not wait for that act. Companies must disclose discarded unsold products, and large companies are already restricted from destroying unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear. Those rules have their own dates, set out on a separate page.

The company in scope is the one that places the product on the Union market. For a given article that can be the manufacturer selling under its own name, the brand that has the product made, or the retailer that imports it. The same company can play a different role from one product to the next. Micro and small enterprises are treated differently under the destruction ban. That exception should not be assumed for every requirement a later textile act may set.

The practical step now is to keep fibre composition, supplier names and facility information in a form that can be mapped once the delegated act is known. The official text is CELEX 32024R1781. Where this site offers a PDF, it is a stored copy of the English official text.

The ESPR speaks to the companies that place products on the Union market, and to the authorities that supervise them. For a textile product, that company may be the manufacturer, the brand or the importing retailer, depending on who first makes the product available in the Union.

Apparel, clothing accessories and footwear are already named in the destruction rules. Broader ecodesign requirements for textiles still depend on a delegated act planned, indicatively, for late 2027, with application expected around 2029 after a transition of at least 18 months. Fibre composition, supplier identity and facility information are the kinds of facts those rules usually ask for. They are not yet the final list of ESPR textile fields.

JOYNN supplies a product passport, chain and facility data, and the JOYNN Index. A company can use that record to prepare for the textile delegated act and to answer data requests. Publishing a passport does not mean the future ESPR fields have been met, and it does not make the company compliant. JOYNN is not legal advice. The Index is a criteria set used with audits. It is not a consumer sustainability label.