Does ESPR apply to my textile business? A decision tree for EU SMEs

Este artículo solo está disponible actualmente en inglés. El texto a continuación es la versión de referencia.

If you make, import, or place textile products on the EU market and you run a small or medium-sized business, ESPR — Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 — affects you, but not all at once and not in the way most marketing copy suggests. Several of its rules either do not apply to micro and small enterprises at all, or apply on a long delay. This article walks you through the five questions that decide what’s actually on your plate.

The article assumes you’ve already read what ESPR is. If you haven’t, start with The EU Digital Product Passport, explained for SMEs and come back.

Question 1 — Are you the one placing the product on the EU market?

ESPR obligations attach to the economic operator placing the product on the market or putting it into service. For a textile SME, that’s usually one of three roles:

You manufacture textiles in the EU and sell them. You are the manufacturer; the obligations are yours.
You manufacture outside the EU and sell into the EU through your own EU branch or representative. The EU-established responsible economic operator carries the obligations.
You import finished garments from outside the EU and sell them in the EU. You are the importer; the obligations sit with you.

Annex III makes this concrete by listing the manufacturer’s operator identifier (point g), the importer’s information including the EORI number (point j), and “the name, contact details and unique operator identifier of the economic operator established in the Union responsible for carrying out the tasks set out in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020” (point k) as data fields the DPP must carry. Whoever fills those fields is on the hook.

If you are none of those — you only sell other brands’ finished textiles in your shop — ESPR’s manufacturer obligations are not yours. They sit upstream. You may still see DPP data flow through to you (because Article 10(3) requires the operator placing the product to give dealers a digital copy of the data carrier on request), but the compliance work is theirs.

Question 2 — Is your product on the working-plan list?

ESPR’s first working plan, set out in Article 18(5), prioritises ten product groups for delegated-act work. Point © names “textiles, in particular garments and footwear.” Point (d) adds furniture including mattresses, which catches household-textile manufacturers whose products sit in the mattress category. Hats, headgear, and footwear are textile-adjacent and explicitly named in Annex VII (more on that below).

If your product is woven or knitted apparel, accessories, or footwear, you are in the first wave. If your product is a non-apparel textile — say, technical textiles for industrial use — you may not be in the first wave at all, depending on how the Commission scopes the textile delegated act. This is the kind of detail the delegated act will resolve when adopted; the framework regulation does not draw the line.

Question 3 — Is the textile delegated act adopted yet?

As of 2026-05, no textile delegated act has been adopted under ESPR. The textile delegated act is in development under the first working plan, but it has not yet been published in the Official Journal.

This matters because Article 9(1) ties the DPP obligation to the delegated act, not to ESPR itself: “products can only be placed on the market or put into service if a digital product passport is available in accordance with the applicable delegated acts adopted pursuant to Article 4.” No applicable delegated act, no DPP obligation yet.

What this does not mean: that you can wait until the delegated act drops. Article 4(4) gives the runway between entry into force and date of application as a minimum of 18 months, and Article 4(7) confirms that the first delegated act under ESPR cannot enter into force before 19 July 2025. Practically, when the textile delegated act is adopted, you’ll have 18 months from its entry into force to be ready. The smart SME starts mapping its data now and decides on its DPP service provider well before that clock starts.

Question 4 — Are you a micro, small, medium, or larger enterprise?

This is the most important question for an SME and the one most marketing copy gets wrong. ESPR has two textile-relevant rules that are already in force or near it, and both grant significant SME exemptions.

The EU’s standard SME definition is set out in Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and is built on headcount plus either turnover or balance-sheet total. The four bands the Commission uses — micro, small, medium, large — drive the ESPR exemptions below. Check your own classification against the recommendation rather than estimating.

The unsold-textile destruction ban (Article 25)

Article 25(1) prohibits the destruction of unsold consumer products listed in Annex VII. Annex VII names exactly which textile products are covered:

CN heading 4203 — articles of apparel and clothing accessories of leather or composition leather
CN chapter 61 — articles of apparel and clothing accessories, knitted or crocheted
CN chapter 62 — articles of apparel and clothing accessories, not knitted or crocheted
CN headings 6504 and 6505 — hats and other headgear
CN chapters 6401 to 6405 — footwear

The destruction ban for these items applies from 19 July 2026. But Article 25(1) then states: “This paragraph shall not apply to micro and small enterprises. This paragraph shall apply to medium-sized enterprises from 19 July 2030.”

So:

Micro and small enterprises: the destruction ban does not apply to you. (It can be extended to you by future delegated act if there is evidence small enterprises are being used to circumvent the ban — Article 25(5) — but the default is exempt.)
Medium-sized enterprises: the destruction ban applies from 19 July 2030. You have a four-year runway.
Larger enterprises: the ban applies from 19 July 2026.

The disclosure obligation (Article 24)

Article 24(1) requires economic operators that discard unsold consumer products to publish, on an accessible page of their website, the number and weight of products discarded per year, the reasons, the proportion sent to reuse / recycling / disposal, and prevention measures taken or planned. The same SME exemption applies verbatim: “This paragraph shall not apply to micro and small enterprises. This paragraph shall apply to medium-sized enterprises from 19 July 2030.”

The DPP obligation itself

The DPP obligation, when the textile delegated act activates it, will apply to you regardless of size. Article 22(3) does require Member States to take measures to help SMEs, in particular microenterprises, comply — including one-stop shops, awareness-raising, and (where State aid rules permit) financial support, fiscal advantages, and training. Whether your Member State has set those up yet is worth checking with your trade association.

Question 5 — If destruction is unavoidable, what derogations exist?

The destruction ban is not absolute. Article 25(5) lists explicit derogations under which destroying unsold textiles is still permitted:

(a) health, hygiene, or safety reasons
(b) damage caused by handling or detected after returns, where repair is not cost-effective
(d) non-acceptance of products offered for donation
(e) unsuitability for reuse-preparation or remanufacturing
(f) unsaleability due to IP infringement, including counterfeit products
(g) destruction is the option with the least negative environmental impact

The derogation list is also why disclosure (Article 24) matters even where destruction is permitted: the operator must report which derogation was used. The audit trail is the regulation’s enforcement mechanism.

What an SME textile business should do this quarter

Three steps in order:

Confirm your size classification. Pull your own headcount and last-year turnover or balance-sheet figures, and check them against Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC. The exemptions in Articles 24 and 25 hinge on this; estimating is not safe.
Identify your role under Question 1. Manufacturer, importer, EU-established responsible operator. The DPP obligations (when activated by the textile delegated act) attach to that role, not to your industry generally.
Watch the textile delegated act. Subscribe to OJ alerts for ESPR delegated acts, or — easier — track the Commission’s ESPR working plan page. When the textile delegated act enters into force, the 18-month runway under Article 4(4) starts. That’s your window to get the DPP infrastructure in place.

Your trade association is also a real route. Article 22(3) requires Member States to consult organisations representing SMEs on what compliance support to provide. The associations get earlier visibility into the delegated-act drafting than individual SMEs do.