Your own copy of a battery passport is not the back-up the law asks for

The belief that needs correcting

Among importers, authorised representatives and manufacturers preparing for 18 February 2027, one assumption keeps surfacing in two forms. The first: "our provider hosts the passports, so continuity is their problem." The second: "we keep full exports of every passport, so we are covered." Both feel reasonable. Both are wrong in the same way, and the reason is written into the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation itself.

What Article 10(4) actually says

ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) Article 10(4): "The economic operator, when placing the product on the market, shall make available a back-up copy of the digital product passport through a digital product passport service provider."

Two definitions give that sentence its teeth. Article 2(32) defines a digital product passport service provider as "an independent third-party authorised by the economic operator." And Article 27(1)(c) sharpens the duty for manufacturers: the back-up must be of "the most up-to-date version" of the passport — a maintained, current copy, not a snapshot taken at launch.

Read together: you may host your live passport yourself, because Article 11(c) expressly allows storage "by the economic operator responsible for its creation or by digital product passport service providers." But the back-up leg cannot stay in-house. An internal export, however diligent, is not a back-up "through a digital product passport service provider," because you are not an independent third party to yourself.

Why the rule exists

Article 11(e) requires the passport to remain available for its full prescribed period "including after an insolvency, a liquidation or a cessation of activity in the Union" of the responsible operator. The European Commission's own DPP FAQ puts it plainly: the back-up secures the passport's availability throughout the product's expected lifetime even if the original economic operator faces insolvency, liquidation, or ceases operations.

A passport is a record that must outlive its author. Batteries stay in service for years after the company that placed them may have exited the market; recyclers, second-life operators and market-surveillance authorities still need the record. The back-up is the mechanism that makes the record survive.

The registry will not do this for you

A common follow-up: "the EU registry holds it anyway." It does not. Under Article 13 and the registry's operating rules in Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778, in force since 6 August 2026, the registry stores unique identifiers and registration metadata. The passport content itself lives with the economic operator or a service provider. There is no government copy. If your passport and its back-up both disappear, nothing in Brussels restores them.

The honest open question

Can the same provider that hosts your primary passport also hold the "independent" back-up? The regulation does not say. The rules for service providers arrive in a delegated act the Commission''s timeline places, indicatively, in 2027 — and industry is actively lobbying on exactly this point: DIGITALEUROPE has asked the Commission to confirm that one provider may be authorised for both primary hosting and back-up storage, while other associations have argued against the back-up obligation''s cost altogether.

Until the delegated act is adopted, no one can tell you with authority which reading will govern. The conservative reading is that the back-up sits with a genuinely separate party from your primary host; the flexible reading is that any independent third party — including your existing provider — qualifies. What is not in dispute under either reading: the back-up must exist, it must be held outside your own organisation, and it must be current.

What to do before 18 February 2027

If you place EV batteries, LMT batteries or industrial batteries above 2 kWh on the EU market, the passport duty lands on 18 February 2027 and the back-up duty is part of it — not a later refinement. Three concrete steps. First, decide now who holds your back-up copy, and record the arrangement in writing; Article 27(1)(c) makes it part of your compliance file, and the duty stays yours even when the hosting is delegated. Second, ask your provider — current or prospective — how the back-up stays synchronised with the live passport, and what happens to both copies if the provider itself ceases operations. Third, watch the delegated act: when it arrives it may settle the independence question and introduce a certification scheme for providers, and your arrangement should be revisited against it.

The passport creation work is documented elsewhere on this blog. If you want to see how hosted passports, registry-readiness and access tiers fit together in practice, the platform overview is at /platform.