Article 4 · Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778

Contents

Article 4Verification requirements for economic operators#

1.Economic operators that are natural persons acting as sole traders shall be qualified as ‘verified economic operators’ if one of the following conditions is satisfied:

(a)where required to be established in the Union, they submit evidence of their identity by means of a qualified electronic signature supported by a qualified certificate for electronic signatures in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 910/2014; or they submit evidence of their identity by means of an electronic identification means that meets the requirements of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 with regard to the assurance levels ‘high’, or an electronic attestation of attributes issued under Union law that enables the identification of the economic operator;

(b)where not required to be established in the Union, they submit evidence of their identity by means of a qualified electronic signature supported by a qualified certificate for electronic signatures in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, or an electronic attestation of attributes issued under Union law that enables the identification of the economic operator.

2.Economic operators acting as legal persons shall be qualified as ‘verified economic operators’ if one of the following conditions is satisfied:

(a)where required to be established in the Union, they submit evidence of their identity and of their establishment by means of a qualified electronic seal supported by a qualified certificate for electronic seal, issued by a qualified trust service provider pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 910/2014; or after submitting evidence of their identity and of their establishment by means of a qualified electronic attestation of attributes issued under Union law that enables the identification of the economic operator;

(b)where not required to be established in the Union, they submit evidence of their identity and, where applicable, of their establishment by means of a qualified electronic seal supported by a qualified certificate for electronic seal, issued by a qualified trust service provider pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, or an electronic attestation of attributes issued under Union law that enables the identification of the economic operator.

3.Without prejudice to other Union law, access to the digital product passport registry shall be granted to verified economic operators for the purpose of registering digital product passports. .

4.Economic operators shall retain the status as verified economic operators until their electronic identification means expire but no longer than three years from the date of verification in accordance with paragraph 1 or 2. Once such means expire or the three-year period has expired, whichever occurs first, economic operators shall no longer be able to register new digital product passports in the registry or modify any data referred to in Article 8. They may do so only if they successfully repeat the identity verification process in accordance with paragraph 1 or 2. The status of the digital product passport in the registry shall be updated accordingly.

5.Without prejudice to paragraph 4, where the digital product passport registry is integrated with another Union information system with an equivalent or identical identity verification process, the economic operator already registered in that information system is not required to undergo a new identity verification process in the digital product passport registry.

Defined terms · 18

Show every defined term

authentication token
means a token that securely transmits information about successful authentication and is used to prove authenticated sessions or delegated access between applications and the digital product passport information system;
controlled vocabulary
means a structured and authoritative set of standardised terms with defined meanings with a view to ensuring consistent representation of data attributes across digital product passports;
data exchange model
means a structured framework through which data can be exchanged between different systems and platforms;
data model
means a structured framework that organises elements of data, standardises the structure, determines how they relate to one another, and identifies the entities, their attributes and the relationship between those entities;
digital product passport
includes the battery passport established by Article 77 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542.
hash of the version of the digital product passport
means the output generated from the relevant electronic data using a cryptographic algorithm from the relevant version of the digital product passport;
identity verification process
means the process by which a natural person or legal person provides evidence of identity and, where applicable, of establishment;
log system
means an automated system that records and stores information on all operations and interactions carried out in the registry;
login credentials
means a set of unique identifiers, such as a username and password, that enables a user to verify its identity in order to authenticate themselves in the registry;
massive data download
means the retrieval of an exceptionally large or complex dataset - typically ranging from terabytes to petabytes in scale - which exceeds the processing or storage capabilities of conventional tools or a single local machine or interferes with monitoring safeguards.
registry
means the information system established and maintained by the Commission in accordance with Article 13 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781;
semantic conformity
means the extent to which the data contained in a digital product passport comply with the applicable semantic specification, in that:
semantic interoperability
means the ability of information systems and the organisations that support them to exchange data in such a way that the meaning of exchanged information is mutually understood and unambiguously interpretable by all parties, regardless of the underlying technology or jurisdiction;
semantic repository
means a collection of data models and semantic definitions that are composed of a structured and logically interrelated set of terms and their meanings specifying the core elements of the digital product passport, the definitions of names or vocabularies, the data elements and the ontology associated with specific data in order to ensure common understanding across all users, and cross-lingual interpretation used for digital product passport validation and for linking the registry data with the digital product passports;
semantic specification
means any artefact published in the semantic repository, including ontologies, data models, controlled vocabularies, and code lists, together with their versioning metadata and provenance information;
value chain actor
means a natural or legal person, other than the economic operator, that performs activities in the value chain of a product requiring a digital product passport and its registration in the registry, such as a repairer, refurbisher, remanufacturer or recycler;
verified economic operator
means an economic operator that has successfully completed the identity verification process in the registry in accordance with Article 4;
verified value chain actor
means a value chain actor that has successfully completed the identity verification process in the registry in accordance with Article 5;