--- title: The EU Digital Product Passport glossary description: Plain-language definitions of the EU Digital Product Passport terms that matter — ESPR, GS1 Digital Link, EPCIS, EPREL, SVHC, PEF and more. For people and AI. canonical: "https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary" locale: en source: "https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary" --- # The EU Digital Product Passport glossary > Plain-language definitions of the EU Digital Product Passport terms that matter — ESPR, GS1 Digital Link, EPCIS, EPREL, SVHC, PEF and more. For people and AI. Clear, citable definitions of the regulations, standards and concepts behind the EU Digital Product Passport — the ones you actually meet when you build one. ## Standards & specifications - [Data carrier](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/data-carrier): A data carrier is the physical, printed or attached link on a product — typically a QR code or NFC tag — that resolves to its Digital Product Passport when scanned. ESPR defines it as the standardised, openly readable way to connect a real product to its online passport. - [EPCIS 2.0](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/epcis): EPCIS 2.0 is the GS1 standard for capturing and sharing supply-chain event data — the what, when, where and why of every step a product takes. It lets a Digital Product Passport carry an interoperable, machine-readable record of lifecycle and traceability events instead of a static datasheet. - [GS1 Digital Link](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/gs1-digital-link): GS1 Digital Link is the GS1 standard that turns a product identifier (like a GTIN) into a web URL, so a single QR code can resolve to different content — a consumer page, a JSON-LD passport, a service endpoint — depending on who scans it. It is the data-carrier format the EU Digital Product Passport is built to use. - [JSON-LD](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/json-ld): JSON-LD (JSON for Linked Data) is a W3C standard that adds shared, web-resolvable meaning to ordinary JSON, so a machine knows that a field labelled "recycledContent" is the same concept everywhere. It is the format a Digital Product Passport is served in so that systems, search engines and AI agents can read it unambiguously. - [MCP (Model Context Protocol)](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/mcp): MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants and agents securely call external tools and data sources through a uniform interface, instead of each integration being bespoke. TracePass ships an MCP server, so an AI agent can create, fill and publish Digital Product Passports directly. - [OpenAPI](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/openapi): OpenAPI is the industry-standard, machine-readable way to describe a REST API — its endpoints, parameters, request and response shapes and authentication — in one specification file. TracePass publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 spec so any tool or AI agent can discover and call the passport API without bespoke documentation. ## EU regulations - [CSRD / ESRS](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/csrd-esrs): CSRD is the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive; ESRS are the European Sustainability Reporting Standards that define what a company must report under it. Together they govern company-level sustainability reporting — distinct from the product-level Digital Product Passport. - [ESPR](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/espr): ESPR is the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, in force since 18 July 2024. It is the umbrella law that makes the Digital Product Passport mandatory, rolling it out product group by product group through delegated acts expected across roughly 2027–2030. - [EU Battery Regulation](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/eu-battery-regulation): The EU Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 governs the full life cycle of batteries placed on the EU market — from carbon footprint and recycled content to collection and recycling. It introduces the battery passport, which becomes mandatory on 18 February 2027 for LMT, industrial (>2 kWh) and electric-vehicle batteries. - [EUDR](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/eudr): EUDR is the EU Deforestation Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, which bars listed commodities — including wood, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, palm oil and rubber — and products made from them from the EU market unless they are deforestation-free and legal. Operators must run due diligence with geolocation coordinates for every plot of land of origin. - [PPWR](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/ppwr): PPWR is the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU) 2025/40, which replaces the old packaging directive with directly applicable EU rules. It sets recyclability grades, minimum recycled-content targets, reuse goals and extended producer responsibility (EPR) for all packaging on the EU market. ## DPP concepts - [Confidence score](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/confidence-score): A confidence score is the per-field rating the AI attaches to each value it extracts from your documents, signalling how sure it is the value is correct. It tells a human reviewer exactly which fields to double-check before approving and publishing a Digital Product Passport. - [Delegated act](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/delegated-act): A delegated act is secondary EU legislation the European Commission adopts to fill in the technical detail of a parent regulation. For the Digital Product Passport, the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) sets the framework, but each product group's actual DPP requirements — which fields, which deadline — only become legally binding through a product-specific delegated act. - [Digital Product Passport (DPP)](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/digital-product-passport): A Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a structured, machine-readable digital record tied to a specific product, batch or item that holds its regulated sustainability and compliance data across the lifecycle. It is reached by scanning a data carrier (typically a GS1 Digital Link QR) and is mandated under the EU ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. - [Economic operator](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/economic-operator): An economic operator is the legal entity that places a product on the EU market and therefore carries the Digital Product Passport obligation — typically the manufacturer, but also the importer or the manufacturer's authorised representative. Under the EU ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) this operator is accountable for creating the passport and ensuring its data is accurate. - [EU DPP Registry](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/eu-dpp-registry): The EU DPP Registry is the central system the European Commission operates to hold each product's unique identifier and the URL of its Digital Product Passport, so customs and market-surveillance authorities can find the right passport. Established under the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781), it is scheduled to go live on 19 July 2026. - [Source attribution](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/source-attribution): Source attribution links each filled passport field back to the exact source document and page it came from — a test report, datasheet or declaration. It is the audit-trail backbone that lets a human (or a market-surveillance authority) verify any value without re-reading every file. - [Unique product identifier (UPI)](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/unique-product-identifier): A unique product identifier (UPI) is the persistent ID that links a physical product to its Digital Product Passport and registers it in the EU DPP Registry. Under the EU ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) it is encoded in the product's data carrier — commonly a GTIN expressed through GS1 Digital Link — so a scan resolves to exactly the right passport. ## Compliance data - [CE marking](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/ce-marking): CE marking is the manufacturer's declaration that a product meets the applicable EU health, safety and environmental requirements, letting it circulate freely in the European Economic Area. Affixing the CE mark is backed by a signed EU Declaration of Conformity and the supporting technical documentation; it is governed by Regulation (EC) 765/2008 and Decision 768/2008/EC. - [EPD (Environmental Product Declaration)](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/epd): An EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) is a verified, standardised document reporting a product's life-cycle environmental impacts, based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) and independently verified. It is a Type III environmental declaration under ISO 14025; for construction products, EPDs follow the harmonised European standard EN 15804. - [EPREL](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/eprel): EPREL (European Product Registry for Energy Labelling) is the EU's central database where suppliers must register energy-labelled products — appliances, electronics, lighting and more — before selling them in the EU. Established under Regulation (EU) 2017/1369, its energy-efficiency data is a ready source to reuse into the Digital Product Passports of those product groups. - [PEF](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/pef): PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) is the European Commission's standardised method for measuring a product's life-cycle environmental impact across multiple impact categories, set out in Recommendation (EU) 2021/2279. A PEF study quantifies impacts like carbon footprint using category-specific rules (PEFCRs) so results are comparable and verifiable. - [Recycled content](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/recycled-content): Recycled content is the proportion of a product or material — usually expressed as a percentage by weight — that comes from recycled rather than virgin feedstock. Under EU law it is becoming a mandatory, verifiable data field: the Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 sets minimum recycled-content shares for key metals, and PPWR (EU) 2025/40 sets recycled-content targets for plastic packaging. - [SCIP](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/scip): SCIP is the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) database of Substances of Concern In articles as such or in complex objects (Products). Established under the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC), it requires suppliers to notify articles containing an SVHC above 0.1% weight by weight before placing them on the EU market. - [SVHC](https://www.tracepass.eu/glossary/svhc): An SVHC (Substance of Very High Concern) is a chemical identified under the EU REACH Regulation (EC) 1907/2006 as carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic to reproduction, persistent, or otherwise seriously hazardous. ECHA maintains the Candidate List of SVHCs; their presence in articles must be declared above defined thresholds.