Battery Passport for Importers: Your Obligations from 2027

If you import batteries into the EU from a third country, you become the responsible economic operator. The EU Battery Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1542) sets out the importer obligations in Art. 41, from verifying the EU declaration of conformity to maintaining technical documentation for 10 years. Starting 18 February 2027, the battery passport adds another layer of requirements. This article breaks down every obligation and explains how importers can prepare.

All obligations at a glance: battery passport for importers. Imported e-bike and LMT batteries are a common case.

Who Is an “Importer” Under the Regulation?

Art. 3(46) of the EU Battery Regulation defines an importer as any natural or legal person established in the EU who places a battery from a third country on the EU market. The decisive factor is not the physical border crossing but the first making available on the EU market.

This definition covers a wide range of actors:

• Trading companies that purchase batteries from Asia or North America and resell them in the EU
• Distributors with direct imports that order without an intermediate EU importer
• OEM manufacturers that source battery cells or packs from China, Korea, or Japan and integrate them into their own products
• EU subsidiaries of manufacturers based outside the EU, such as the European branch of a Chinese battery manufacturer

If you are the first entity in the EU supply chain to make a battery available on the market, you are the importer under the regulation, regardless of whether you physically handle the import or use a freight forwarder. For an overview of key dates, see the EU Battery Regulation 2027 timeline.

The 12 Importer Obligations Under Art. 41

Art. 41 of the EU Battery Regulation sets out the importer's obligations in eight paragraphs. Paragraph 2 alone bundles several separate checks, which is why the breakdown below splits them into 12 individual duties. The order follows the sequence of an import rather than the numbering of the paragraphs, so the paragraph reference is given with every duty:

1. Only import compliant batteries (para. 1)

You may only place batteries on the market that comply with the requirements of Articles 6 to 10, 12, 13, and 14. These articles cover substance restrictions, carbon footprint, minimum recycled content, performance and durability requirements, safety requirements, and labeling obligations.

2. Verify the EU declaration of conformity (para. 2)

Before placing a battery on the market, you must ensure that the manufacturer has drawn up the EU declaration of conformity in accordance with Art. 18. This document confirms that the battery meets all applicable requirements.

3. Verify technical documentation (para. 2)

You must verify that the technical documentation required under Annex VIII has been drawn up. This documentation contains the detailed evidence from the conformity assessment.

4. Verify CE marking (para. 2)

The battery must bear the CE marking in accordance with Art. 19. As an importer, you verify this before placing the battery on the market.

5. Verify manufacturer labeling (para. 2)

The battery must bear the manufacturer's name, registered trade name or trademark, postal address, and email address (cf. Art. 38(7)). This information must appear on the battery itself or, where this is not possible, on the packaging or in an accompanying document.

6. Ensure unique identifier (para. 2)

Each battery must carry a unique identifier. For batteries with a capacity exceeding 2 kWh, this will be the battery passport QR code from February 2027 onward. For details on physical labeling, see battery passport labeling and QR code requirements.

7. Add own contact information (para. 3)

As an importer, you must indicate your own name, registered trade name or trademark, postal address, and email address on the battery, the packaging, or an accompanying document. This is in addition to the manufacturer's details.

8. Maintain storage and transport conditions (para. 4)

When you store or transport batteries, storage and transport conditions must not jeopardize compliance with the requirements. Temperature, humidity, and mechanical stress must conform to the manufacturer's specifications.

9. Keep documentation for 10 years (para. 7)

The EU declaration of conformity and technical documentation must be kept for 10 years after the last battery of that type was placed on the market. More on this in the section on 10-year documentation.

10. Cooperate with market surveillance authorities (para. 8)

At the request of a national market surveillance authority, you must provide all information and documentation necessary to demonstrate compliance, in a language readily understood by the authority.

11. Monitor the market and take corrective action (para. 5 and 6)

If you have reason to believe a battery is not compliant, you must not place it on the market or must take corrective action, including withdrawal or recall, and inform the manufacturer and the market surveillance authorities without delay. Where the risk presented by a battery makes it appropriate, para. 5 additionally requires sample testing of marketed batteries, investigation and, where necessary, a register of complaints, non-conforming batteries and recalls, and you must keep your distributors informed.

12. Inform authorities of risks (para. 6)

If you consider that a battery presents a risk to human health or the environment, you must immediately inform the competent authorities of the Member State and document the measures taken.

Importer vs. Manufacturer vs. Distributor

The EU Battery Regulation distinguishes three categories of economic operators. The table below shows who is responsible for what. The importer has nearly the same obligations as the manufacturer, the key difference being that the importer verifies documents and markings rather than creating them.

The table shows: as an importer, you sit right behind the manufacturer in the chain of responsibility. Distributors, by contrast, carry significantly fewer obligations.

Battery Passport-Specific Obligations

From 18 February 2027, batteries with a capacity exceeding 2 kWh must have a battery passport, a digital data record accessible via a QR code on the battery. For importers, this means:

• Verify existence: Ensure the manufacturer has created a battery passport before the battery crosses the EU border.
• Check data completeness: The battery passport must contain all data points specified in Art. 77, from material composition and carbon footprint to recycling information.
• Inspect the QR code: The QR code must be physically applied to the battery and remain legible throughout its lifetime.
• Update data if needed: If the manufacturer has supplied incomplete data, you as the importer must supplement missing information, such as your own contact details as the economic operator.

The importer does not create the battery passport. But you must ensure it exists and is complete. For a full overview of required data points, see the battery passport checklist 2027.

Special Situation: Importers as the Party Placing the Battery on the Market

In many cases, the importer is simultaneously the first economic operator to make the battery available on the EU market. Art. 3(63) defines “placing on the market” as the first making available of a battery on the EU market. When the manufacturer is located outside the EU and has no direct EU sales channel, the importer automatically becomes the entity placing the battery on the market.

This has concrete consequences:

• If the third-country manufacturer has not created a battery passport, the importer must either create it themselves or contractually obligate the manufacturer to do so.
• Many Asian manufacturers are not yet familiar with EU requirements. The responsibility to identify and close data gaps falls on the importer.
• In practice, this means you need clear supplier agreements that specify which data the manufacturer must deliver, in what format, and by when.

For more on supply chain requirements, see the article on supply chain due diligence.

The first hurdle: registration in the producer register

Before the passport duty matters at all, an older duty stands in the way that many importers miss. Anyone making batteries available on the German market for the first time counts as a producer under the regulation and has to register. Section 5(1) BattDG is unambiguous: “Before a producer makes batteries available on the market for the first time within the scope of this Act, it ... is obliged to register with the competent authority under Article 55(2) subparagraph 1 sentence 1 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, stating the brand and the relevant battery category.”

Two points decide this for importers. First the order: register, then supply. Second the sanction: missing or late registration sits in section 60(2) number 23 BattDG, and under section 60(3) that number belongs to the tier of up to €100,000. That is the highest fine tier an importer can face for the duties discussed here; a faulty passport sits well below it at up to €10,000.

What else comes with the producer role

An importer who becomes a producer under the regulation takes on more than the passport duty. Article 56(1) provides: “Producers shall have extended producer responsibility for batteries that they make available on the market for the first time within the territory of a Member State.” Paragraph 4 lists what the financial contributions have to cover:

• separate collection of waste batteries, their transport and treatment, less the revenue from re-use, repurposing and secondary raw materials,
• the survey on the composition of collected mixed municipal waste under Article 69(5),
• the information on waste prevention and waste battery management under Article 74,
• the collection and reporting of data to the authorities under Article 75.

For producers without an establishment in the member state concerned, paragraph 3 additionally requires an authorised representative for extended producer responsibility, appointed “by written mandate”. If you import from a third country and sell in several member states, you need that appointment in each of them.

Due diligence: two more years, but only for some

Supply chain due diligence originally applied from 18 August 2025. Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 of 18 July 2025 replaced that date in Article 48(1) with 18 August 2027, moving it by two years. The act gives two reasons: the changed geopolitical situation in raw material sourcing, and the fact that designating notified bodies is taking longer than expected.

Whether the duties apply to you at all is decided by Article 47: the chapter does not apply to economic operators that “had a net turnover of less than EUR 40 million in the financial year preceding the last financial year” and are not part of a group exceeding that figure on a consolidated basis. For many importers that means the passport duty applies, the due diligence duties do not. The due diligence report still remains a passport field once a supplier provides it.

Documentation Obligation: 10 Years

Art. 41(7) requires importers to keep the EU declaration of conformity and the technical documentation for 10 years after the last battery of that type was placed on the market. These documents must be made available to market surveillance authorities upon request at any time.

Practical recommendations:

• Digital archiving with a clear folder structure per battery type and import date
• Version control: when a battery type is modified, the updated documentation must also be retained for 10 years
• Access permissions set up so that authority requests can be answered within a few days
• A retention calendar that automatically flags when specific documentation can be deleted at the earliest

Practical Tips for Importers

Implementing the Art. 41 obligations requires systematic preparation. The following steps help you build a structured process:

1. Establish supplier qualification: Evaluate your battery manufacturers against a checklist covering all Art. 41 requirements. Manufacturers that cannot provide an EU declaration of conformity or technical documentation do not qualify.
2. Include battery passport requirements in purchasing contracts: Contractually define which data points the manufacturer must deliver, in what format, and by what deadline.
3. Verify data before customs clearance: Check the EU declaration of conformity, CE marking, and battery passport data before the goods are cleared through customs, not after they arrive at your warehouse.
4. Use a structured tool: Battery passport software like DPP Hero lets you capture and manage all required data points systematically based on DIN SPEC 99100.
5. Start with pilot imports: Begin with a small batch to run through the entire process, from data collection to QR code labeling.
6. Consider regulatory consulting: For your first compliance cycle, a specialized consultant can help identify blind spots in your process.

For a complete overview of preparation steps, see the battery passport creation guide. For cost information, see battery passport costs.

Chinese Manufacturers and the EU Market

China is the world's largest exporter of lithium-ion batteries. Companies like CATL, BYD, EVE Energy, CALB, and Gotion High-Tech supply battery cells and packs for electric vehicles, home storage systems, and industrial applications to the EU. For EU importers, this creates specific challenges:

• Data formats: Chinese manufacturers often use internal data formats that do not align with EU requirements. Clarify early which format you need the data in for the battery passport, ideally as a structured dataset according to DIN SPEC 99100.
• Communication: Create a standardized data request template in English and Chinese that lists all mandatory battery passport fields.
• Timeline: Allow at least 3 to 6 months lead time for the initial data delivery. Chinese manufacturers need time to adapt their internal processes.
• Common gaps: Pay particular attention to data on the carbon footprint (Scope 3 emissions), raw material origins (cobalt, lithium), and recycled content percentages. You must actively request these data points.

Supply chain due diligence obligations apply regardless of whether your manufacturer is based in China, Korea, or any other third country.

What Article 41(1) actually requires

The sentence is short and consequential: importers shall place a battery on the market only where it complies with the requirements of Articles 6 to 10 and 12, 13 and 14. Spelled out, that means substance restrictions (Article 6), carbon footprint (7), recycled content (8), performance and durability of portable batteries (9) and of industrial, LMT and electric vehicle batteries (10), safety of stationary storage systems (12), labeling (13), and the state of health data in the battery management system (14).

One item often added to that list is not in it: removability and replaceability under Article 11. It applies, but it binds whoever places the product with the built-in battery on the market, and it is not part of the importer's verification duty under paragraph 1.

On recycled content the dates are worth a closer look, because they are staged. From 18 August 2028, or 24 months after the delegated act still to come, the batteries concerned must be accompanied by documentation stating, per model, per year and per manufacturing plant, the share of cobalt, lithium, nickel and lead recovered from waste. From 18 August 2031 minimum shares apply: 16 percent cobalt, 85 percent lead, 6 percent lithium and 6 percent nickel, for industrial batteries above 2 kWh, electric vehicle batteries and starter batteries. From 18 August 2036 they rise to 26 percent cobalt and 85 percent lead, and only then do LMT batteries come into scope. Import e-bike packs today and you have more time on recycled content than on the passport.

What happens to the passport if the company disappears?

The question sounds theoretical but is settled expressly in Article 78. Point (e) requires the battery passport to remain available even where the responsible economic operator ceases to exist, for instance through insolvency, or ends its activity in the Union. A passport that vanishes with the company does not meet the requirement.

How to achieve that, the Regulation does not prescribe. Point (c) only says who stores: the responsible economic operator itself, or the actors authorised to act on its behalf. So if you use a service provider, settle in the contract what happens to the passport data if you drop out. This is not a statutory third-party backup; it is a matter of contract design, for which the law sets only the goal.

Three further points from the same article belong in the planning. Access to passport data is free of charge under point (b), within the respective access rights; a paywall in front of the public tier would be a breach. Point (g) requires authenticity, reliability and integrity of the data to be ensured, and point (h) requires the passport to offer a high level of security and privacy and to avoid fraud. The text prescribes no particular technology for this; advertising blockchain therefore meets no requirement, it picks a means.

The authorised representative, and what they cannot take on

Where the producer sits outside the EU, Article 40(1) allows them to appoint an authorised representative: a natural or legal person established in the Union, appointed by written mandate. The mandate is valid only if the representative accepts it in writing. A verbal arrangement or a line in the purchase order will not do.

Paragraph 2 draws the line, and it is tighter than many assume. Not part of the mandate are: the obligations under Article 38(1), the supply chain due diligence obligations under Articles 48 to 52, and the obligation to draw up the technical documentation. So the representative can keep documents available and deal with authorities, but cannot relieve the producer of conformity, of the due diligence policy, or of the technical documentation.

For importers that means: an appointed representative does not discharge your own verification duties under Article 41. And where no representative is appointed, it remains the case that the battery may only be placed on the market if it meets the requirements. The only question then is whom the authority approaches first.

Customs, and the rulebooks alongside

The passport is checked at the border. Article 15 of the Ecodesign Regulation requires anyone intending to release a covered product for free circulation to provide the customs authorities with the unique registration identifier. Paragraph 2 turns it around: customs may release a product only once they have at least verified that the registration identifier and the commodity code provided match the entries in the registry. The duty applies from the point at which the registry is operational.

In practice: the commodity code your customs agent enters must match what the registry holds. Maintain the two in different departments and you should plan the reconciliation before the first shipment is standing.

Alongside sit rulebooks that hit the same import and have nothing to do with the passport. The General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988 applies to consumer products, REACH (EC) 1907/2006 to substances, and Directive (EU) 2024/1760 on corporate sustainability due diligence adds to that for larger companies; the Battery Regulation expressly states in Article 47 that Union law on conflict and high-risk areas remains unaffected. Dangerous goods and tariff classification questions, such as the UN 38.3 transport test, come from customs and dangerous goods law, not from the Battery Regulation, yet they arise at the same import.

Not every field is public: the three access levels

An importer checking whether a passport is in order should know that they do not see everything it holds. Article 77(3) splits the content into three access levels. Public through the QR code is only Annex XIII point 1. Points 2 and 3 are restricted data, reserved for authorities, that is notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission. Points 2 and 4 are seen only by persons with a legitimate interest, such as repairers and recyclers.

For verification practice that means: a look at the public passport page is not enough to judge conformity. What you see there is the model layer. Whether the entries for the individual battery and the protected parts are present and correct is something you must have evidenced by the producer, because the verification duty under Article 41 is yours.

In practice that runs through the technical documentation under Annex VIII and the EU declaration of conformity the producer must have drawn up under Article 38. Scan the QR code only and treat the result as a check, and you have not made the check.

FAQ

Does the importer have to create the battery passport?

No. Creating the battery passport is fundamentally the manufacturer's obligation (Art. 77). However, the importer must ensure that a complete battery passport exists. If the manufacturer, for example a company outside the EU, has not created a battery passport, the importer must either take over this task or contractually oblige the manufacturer to do so.

Which batteries require a battery passport?

From 18 February 2027 the battery passport is mandatory for every LMT battery, every industrial battery with a capacity greater than 2 kWh and every electric vehicle battery (Art. 77(1)). The 2 kWh threshold therefore applies only to industrial batteries, and stationary battery energy storage systems count as industrial batteries. LMT batteries (Light Means of Transport) and electric vehicle batteries need a battery passport regardless of their capacity. For more details, see when is the battery passport mandatory?

When do Art. 41 importer obligations take effect?

The general importer obligations under Art. 41 (verifying the EU declaration of conformity, CE marking, manufacturer details) have been applicable since 18 August 2024, the date from which the regulation's market surveillance provisions apply. Battery passport-specific obligations are added from 18 February 2027.

What are the penalties for non-compliance with Art. 41?

Penalties are set by the Member States (Art. 93). They must be “effective, proportionate, and dissuasive.” In Germany, section 60(3) of the Battery Act Implementation Act sets three tiers: up to 500,000 euros, up to 100,000 euros and up to 10,000 euros depending on the breach. A missing registration sits in the 100,000 tier; the battery passport itself, under section 60(2) no. 29, falls under the remaining cases. Additionally, withdrawal or recall of non-compliant batteries at the importer's expense may be required.

How does DPP Hero support importers?

DPP Hero is battery passport software based on DIN SPEC 99100. You can capture all required data points, check completeness, and export the battery passport as a structured dataset. The share link feature lets you provide your manufacturers with a form where they can enter the required data directly, without needing their own DPP Hero account.