Who is responsible for the passport: brand, importer or manufacturer
The obligation follows whoever places the product on the European market under its own name. For a fashion supply chain that sentence reassigns responsibility in three places that are easy to miss: the importer, the converter, and the company that has stopped trading.
Edoardo Rinaldi · Founder, Trama
Last updated: 28 August 2026
The default rule
The passport is the manufacturer’s obligation. Where the manufacturer is established outside the Union, it falls to the importer who brings the product into the market.
An authorised representative does not normally take on the overall responsibility. A distributor does not create the passport; it checks that one exists and is accessible before selling — what a passport is, and what it holds, is set out in the introduction. A second-hand seller is in the same position.
The importer answers for data it did not generate
Most garments sold in Europe are made outside it, which makes the importer’s position the ordinary case rather than the exception.
An importer holds data produced by someone else, in another jurisdiction, often in a language and a format it did not choose. The preparatory study describes it as a custodian of data it did not generate itself, and splits the liability accordingly: the importer answers for failing to exercise due diligence over what it accepted, and the manufacturer answers for having supplied something false.
That split has a practical consequence. Accepting a supplier’s declaration without a document behind it transfers the risk onto the party that accepted it, and a wrong value inside a published passport is a statement, not a gap.
Several importers, one passport
The same product may be brought into the Union by more than one importer. Each of them is independently responsible for the passport of the units it places on the market.
The upload to the European registry, however, happens once. The identifier belongs to the product, not to whoever imported it, and duplicate registrations of the same product are not what the registry is for. Two importers of the same article therefore have to agree on who registers it and on what the record says.
Whoever puts its own label on it becomes the manufacturer
This is the reassignment that matters most in Italy, and it is not a change of workflow but a change of role.
A company that prints, embroiders or relabels a garment and sells it under its own brand takes on the manufacturer’s responsibility for the passport. Private-label production and contract finishing are built on exactly that arrangement: a garment is bought finished or semi-finished, a mark is applied, and it goes to market under the name of the company that applied it.
The consequence is that the passport obligation cannot be pushed back up the chain by contract. The company whose name is on the label answers for the content of the passport, including the fields describing production it did not carry out.
The passport outlives the company
The Regulation requires the passport to remain available for a period set by the delegated act, corresponding at least to the expected lifetime of the product, and it says explicitly that availability survives insolvency, liquidation or the cessation of activity in the Union — the articles are quoted on the ESPR page.
The mechanism is a back-up held with a third-party passport service provider, so that the data does not disappear with the company or with its supplier relationship. The European standard on storage and persistence, published in 2026, puts the same duty in technical terms.
For a brand choosing a provider this is the question that outlasts the others: what happens to published passports when the contract ends. An address printed on a garment label is permanent in a way a subscription is not.
What Italy has today
At the time of writing Italy has a coordination table at the Ministry of the Environment, set up by decree in November 2024 and extended in November 2025, to support the administrations implementing the Regulation. There is no published sanctions decree and no surveillance authority named on that page.
The Regulation requires Member States to lay down penalties that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive, taking into account the seriousness of the infringement and any economic benefit obtained. What those penalties will be in Italy is not yet public.
The one thing that can be done now
The European registry opened on 20 July 2026, and the regulation governing it entered into force on 6 August 2026. Textiles cannot be registered yet, because their delegated act does not exist.
One step is nevertheless available immediately and carries no product category deadline: obtaining verified economic operator status, which is done with a qualified electronic signature or seal and is valid for up to three years. It is the only part of the registry a fashion brand can complete before the act, and it is a prerequisite for everything that follows it.
Common questions
Who has to create the Digital Product Passport, the brand or the factory?
The manufacturer, which for most fashion brands means the brand itself where it has the garment made to its own specification and sells it under its own name. Where the manufacturer is outside the Union, the obligation falls on the importer.
We buy finished garments and add our own label. Who is responsible?
The company that applies its own brand and places the product on the market. Relabelling, printing or embroidering a garment and selling it under your own name means taking on the manufacturer’s responsibility for the passport.
What happens if a non-EU supplier will not provide the data?
The obligation does not move. The importer remains responsible for the passport of what it places on the market, and answers for accepting data it did not verify, while the manufacturer answers for supplying false information. In practice the leverage is contractual and has to be in place before the order, not after it.
Does a distributor or a retailer have to produce a passport?
No. A distributor verifies that the passport exists and is accessible before selling. The same applies to a seller of second-hand goods.
What happens to published passports if the brand closes?
They must remain available. The Regulation states that availability survives insolvency, liquidation or cessation of activity, and the mechanism foreseen is a back-up held with a third-party passport service provider.
Are there penalties in Italy yet?
No penalties specific to this Regulation have been published in Italy. There is a coordination table at the Ministry of the Environment. The Regulation requires Member States to set penalties that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
Can a brand register in the EU registry today?
Not a textile product, because the delegated act does not exist. A company can obtain verified economic operator status now, using a qualified electronic signature or seal; it is valid for up to three years and has no product category deadline attached.