Four digital product passport acts, 901 responses. The one about access to your data got zero
On 18 August the deadline passed for the Commission to define who counts as a person with a legitimate interest, which is to say who may see the restricted part of a battery passport. Six days later we checked the Commission register of initiatives, act by act. This one is the only one of four key digital product passport acts that has collected no feedback at all and has not been touched since January. The other three collected 901 responses between them.
What has been missing since 18 August
Article 77(9) of the battery regulation (EU) 2023/1542 requires the Commission to adopt an implementing act defining who qualifies as a person with a legitimate interest. That sounds procedural. It is one of the most consequential decisions in the whole system: the battery passport has a public layer and a restricted layer, and this act decides who from outside gets the key to the second one.
We have written about this twice. First twelve days before the deadline, when there was still no draft. Then on the day the deadline passed. This is the third piece and the only one that brings something new: numbers.
Four acts, one comparison
The Commission maintains a public register of legislative initiatives. Every entry shows the stages an act passes through and the number of responses collected at each. We pulled the four acts that genuinely shape the digital product passport and lined them up. State of play on 24 August 2026:
- Access rights to the battery passport, initiative 16473, reference Ares(2026)568530. Record last modified: 20 January 2026. Feedback stages: none open, inter-service consultation marked as upcoming. Responses: zero.
- DPP Registry, initiative 16052, reference Ares(2025)10886404. Last modified: 28 May 2026. Responses: 222.
- Ecodesign requirements for iron and steel products, initiative 17672, reference Ares(2026)3678259. Last modified: 13 August 2026. Responses: 84 at planning stage and 142 in the open public consultation, 226 in total.
- DPP service providers, initiative 14382, reference Ares(2024)5904533. Last modified: 26 June 2026. Responses: 178 and 275, 453 in total.
Three acts went through a planning stage and an open public consultation. The fourth has neither scheduled. The only feedback stage listed against the battery passport access act is inter-service consultation, marked as upcoming, with zero responses.
What zero responses means, and what it does not
This distinction matters more than the number itself, so it goes before the conclusions rather than after them.
- It does not mean there will be no consultation. The inter-service stage is marked upcoming, and on the DPP Registry act that exact stage collected 222 responses. The window may still open. We write "not yet", never "never".
- It does not mean nobody is working on it. The last-modified date describes a change to the register record, not work inside the Commission. No movement in the register proves the absence of a public trace, not the absence of work.
- It does mean there is currently no way to have a say. On steel, anyone including firms outside the sector could file a response and 142 did. On battery passport access there is nothing to respond to, because no draft has been published.
Why this is not only a battery manufacturer problem
Here it gets uncomfortable, and this is the real reason to read on if you do not make batteries.
The Joint Research Centre study prepared for the steel act proposes that access levels be defined field by field, and says explicitly that this should follow the precedent of the battery regulation, article 77 and annex XIII. We covered that field-by-field map while the consultation was still open.
So the order is this. Batteries define the access model. Steel inherits it before it is finished. Textiles will inherit it from steel. The middle layer, the one that decides whether a stranger claiming to be a recycler gets data about your composition and your process, is propagating across sectors while its definition is still empty and while nobody has had the chance to comment on it.
This is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to stop treating "who sees what" as a line item in a vendor price list and start treating it as the part of your data architecture most likely to change under your hands.
How to check this yourself in two minutes
You do not have to take our word for it, and you should not. The register of initiatives has a public API that returns exactly these numbers:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/brpapi/searchInitiatives?text=digital+product+passport&size=10&language=EN
Look for two things in the response. The stage field tells you where along the road the act is. The feedback count tells you how many parties were allowed to speak. Putting an initiative number into the groupInitiatives path gives you the same picture for a single act, together with the date the record was last modified.
This is a better source than intermediary newsletters, because it shows state rather than interpretation. It is how we check every date we publish in our deadline calendar.
What you can do in an hour
- Map your data into three layers on paper. Which fields are a public declaration, which are the calculations behind that declaration, and which are evidence for a market surveillance authority. This exercise survives whatever the act eventually says.
- Keep declarations separate from inputs. If you already publish a carbon footprint or a recycled content share, keep the calculation assumptions separate from the headline number in your data model. Merging them later is easy. Separating them under deadline is not.
- Do not buy a ready-made access layer today. If a vendor sells you a permissions module compliant with an act that does not exist, they are selling you their interpretation. Ask what happens to that configuration when the act turns out different.
- Put this in your calendar for late October. That is when it is worth checking the register again, because the steel act is expected in the fourth quarter and it will be the first to show whether the battery access model has been closed anywhere.
FAQ
Does a missed deadline mean the act will not happen?
No. Deadlines in regulations are missed regularly and the act usually arrives later. Missing it neither cancels the obligation nor moves the date the battery passport applies, which remains 18 February 2027.
Is 18 February 2027 moving?
No. These are two different things. The application date for the battery passport comes straight from the regulation, while the missing act concerns only who sees the restricted part of the data.
What is a legitimate interest?
A category from the battery regulation covering parties who are neither ordinary consumers nor supervisory authorities, yet have a reason to see more than the public layer. In practice that means recyclers, repairers and downstream operators. Exactly who fits is what the missing act is meant to define.
How do you know how many responses each act collected?
From the Commission public register of initiatives, through the API given above. The numbers in this piece come from a check run on 24 August 2026 and you can repeat it in two minutes.
Does this mean the Commission is doing it in secret?
No, and that is not what we are calling it. Inter-service consultation is a normal stage of the legislative process, not concealment. The point is different: for the other three acts the route also included a public consultation, and for this one it does not.