Must I disclose business-sensitive data about my tyres?

What you must do concretely

What is expected of you

Distinguish between what is mandatorily public and what is not

The ESPR requires the inclusion of data in the product passport, but not all data contained in it is visible to everyone. Article 10 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) distinguishes between information that is accessible to the public and information intended only for specific parties, such as competent authorities or economic operators further down the supply chain. For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this means in practice that not everything in the passport is automatically viewable by a competitor or end user. Which data falls into which category depends on the product category-specific rules for tyres, which still need to be established. An overview of who may view which data is available on the page who may view which data from the product passport.

Obligations of actors in the supply chain

Article 38 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) specifies what information actors in the supply chain — including importers and distributors — must provide to each other and to competent authorities. This is a different obligation from the public information in the product passport: it concerns data that must be made available upon request by parties with a legal basis to request it, not data that is freely accessible to anyone with a QR code. For an importer or wholesaler, this means that part of the records on composition, origin or test results must be kept in order internally, without automatically meaning that this data will also appear publicly in the passport.

Determine what is genuinely confidential

The practical question a company faces is not "must this be public" in a general sense, but which specific data category for tyres will fall under which regime. This will be determined on a per product category basis and has not yet been finally established for tyres. A company can already inventory which data on rubber composition, recipe or supplier relations it considers commercially sensitive, so that this inventory is ready once the delegated act establishes the classification. See the page for the data expected to appear in the passport which data will be included in the product passport for tyres.

Where things go wrong in practice

Share everything out of caution. An importer who is uncertain about what must and must not be public sometimes provides more data to the platform that compiles the passport than strictly necessary — including internal recipe details not intended for the public part of the passport. Once published, that is not easily reversed.

Confusion between "in the passport" and "public". Some companies assume that every piece of data supplied for the passport is also visible to everyone via the QR code. This is not necessarily the case; there is a difference between what is recorded and what is made publicly accessible.

Not distinguishing between supply chain partner and end user. A wholesaler that shares data with a fleet manager sometimes treats it the same way as a publication to consumers, whereas the obligations under Article 38 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) are specifically directed at actors in the supply chain, with a different legal basis than a public passport.

Unclear agreements with the manufacturer on the origin of data. When an importer passes data from a manufacturer outside the EU to the platform, it is not always established who is responsible if data is subsequently considered too sensitive to be made public. This leads to disputes later, especially when the data has already been published.

Confusion with the tyre label. Because the tyre label already contains longer-existing, partly comparable data, companies sometimes assume that everything stated on the label must also automatically be public in the product passport, or vice versa. The relationship between the two is a point of attention; see how does the tyre label relate to the product passport.

What you can record

• An internal list of which data on rubber composition and formulation are considered commercially sensitive, before submission to the platform. See also which data on rubber composition must I record.
• An agreement with the manufacturer or supplier on which party supplies which part of the data, and who is responsible for its accuracy and confidentiality.
• An overview of which data are expected to become publicly visible and which are intended only for supervisory authorities or chain partners, once the product category-specific rules for tyres are known.
• A procedure for what to do if data has been inadvertently shared too widely, including the question of whether and how this can be adjusted later — see can I adjust data after the product passport has already been published.
• A file containing the underlying test methods and measurement reports, separate from the data intended for publication, so that it is clear what has and has not been submitted for the product passport itself.