What is a delegated act and why does it determine what I must do?

What you must do concretely

What is expected of you

The ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) is a framework regulation. This means that the regulation itself sets out how the system works — who is responsible for what, what a product passport must contain in broad terms, how powers are distributed — but does not lay down concrete requirements per product group. Those concrete requirements come in separate legislation: the delegated acts. For tyres, that act does not yet exist. Article 4 of the ESPR gives the European Commission the power to adopt those acts, and Article 8 describes what must in any case be regulated therein: the product group concerned, which data the passport contains, who may view which data, and from which date the obligation applies.

Understanding that the ESPR itself does not impose tyre-specific requirements

For a company with 10 to 100 employees, it is important to know that reading the ESPR itself is not sufficient to know what will be expected of a tyre in future. The regulation does state that a passport will come into being, and does state what may roughly be included in it, but the precise content — which data, which format, which exceptions — is set out in the delegated act that has yet to be published. Any company wishing to know now which data will be in the passport for tyres will thus encounter a question that can only be definitively answered with that act.

Following when the act for tyres is published

Article 18 of the ESPR regulates the prioritisation and scheduling of product groups: the Commission determines, on the basis of criteria (environmental impact, sales volumes, improvement potential), which product groups are scheduled when. Tyres are on that schedule, but the date on which the act will be published is not yet fixed. It is for a company to monitor that publication, because from that moment the actual obligations and the implementation deadline become known. The question when the product passport becomes mandatory for tyres is therefore directly linked to the publication of this delegated act.

Making a distinction between what is already established and what is still to come

What does follow from the ESPR itself is that a system of digital product passports will come into being, with a QR data carrier and an obligation to keep data available for ten years. What is not yet established is the exact content for tyres specifically. That distinction is relevant for planning within a company: preparations based on the framework regulation (such as checking which data are already available internally) can start now, but actual implementation of a passport awaits the delegated act. Companies wondering what exactly changes for their activities through the ESPR are well advised to keep these two levels — framework regulation and delegated act — separate.

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of misunderstandings recur regularly among companies preparing for the product passport.

An importer reads the ESPR text itself and concludes from it which data will later be mandatory, whereas that list of data is only established in the delegated act. The framework regulation merely indicates the categories that the act must contain, not their content.

A wholesaler schedules its own ICT adjustments on a date that was picked up somewhere as an 'expected implementation date', without checking whether that date comes from an official source. As long as the delegated act is not published, there is no fixed date — only a schedule within the work programme that follows from Article 18.

A company assumes that because other product groups (such as textiles or furniture) already have a delegated act, tyres will automatically follow the same timeline. The order and timing per product group differ, and are not fixed until the Commission publishes the act for that specific group.

A manufacturer invests time in developing a passport structure based on assumptions about what would be "logical" for tyres, without considering the possibility that the delegated act may prescribe a different level of detail or different structure than expected.

A fleet manager assumes that the answer to questions such as whether the product passport also applies to retreaded tyres and tread renewal is already established, whereas this type of boundary question is precisely the kind of specification that belongs in the delegated act itself.

What you can record

• An internal note with the status: which delegated act for tyres is expected, and where that comes from (the ESPR work programme under Article 18).
• A fixed review moment (for example quarterly) to check whether the delegated act for tyres has meanwhile been published, with a reference to the official source rather than an intermediary or news report.
• An overview of which data on own production or imports are already available, so that they do not have to be collected again once the act is published.
• A list of outstanding questions relevant to the own situation, such as the question whether the product passport also applies to small businesses whether the delimitation of product categories — so that these questions can be directly verified as soon as the text of the act is known.
• A brief internal explanation of the difference between the ESPR as a framework regulation and the delegated act as an implementing rule, so that there is no impression within the company that all requirements are already fixed.