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Footwear

Footwear: what applies, what a passport must carry and when

Scope. Footwear, which the Working Plan treats as a separate product category from textiles and apparel.

Does footwear need a Digital Product Passport?

A pair of shoes does not have an EU Digital Product Passport obligation simply because it contains textile material or sits beside clothing in a catalogue. As at 3 September 2026 no footwear-specific ESPR Digital Product Passport requirement has been adopted, and the only date the estate states for this category is a study due by end 2027, which is planned. A study is not a delegated act and does not establish a passport obligation, so there is no application date to work back from.

That is not the same as footwear being outside EU product regulation. The 2025 to 2030 ESPR Working Plan treats footwear as a separate product category from textiles and apparel. Footwear already has its own material-labelling rules, and it is expressly included in the ESPR prohibition on destroying specified unsold consumer products, which applies from 19 July 2026 and is adopted.

The rule that keeps a shoe compliant is to check the scope of each instrument separately rather than classifying by analogy with clothing. A connected or powered shoe adds electronic, radio, battery and software layers, and each one has its own scope test.

3 pages here.

Dates, and what kind of date each one is

  • End 2027 Planned Study milestone. Working Plan indicates study milestone

Adopted means a duty exists in law from that date. Planned means an institution has committed to a measure. Indicative means an official planning date that can move. Every row is in the obligations dataset.

Everything under Footwear 3