EPR packaging compliance: four European markets, four regimes

EPR packaging compliance begins with the first parcel that crosses a border. The obligation changes the moment the shipment touches the ground of the destination country, and since 12 August 2026 the European regulation on packaging and packaging waste has applied in every member state. For an online shop selling into Germany, France, Spain or Italy, the first consequence is a geography of registrations, representatives and symbols that differ from one market to the next.

The European framework was expected to unify the rules. In practice the PPWR sets a common standard and leaves the national regimes in place, and those regimes keep asking different things of whoever places packaging on the market. For an online shop with modest volumes, the difference between markets turns into concrete duties: a registration to file, a representative to appoint, a mark to place on the box.

The PPWR and the national regimes still in force

Regulation (EU) 2025/40 has been in force since 11 February 2025 and applies from 12 August 2026. The gap between the two dates clarifies what the instrument is: a framework that starts producing effects now, while national extended producer responsibility systems remain operational.

Extended producer responsibility is the principle that whoever places packaging on the market contributes to the cost of collecting and recycling it. Italy has applied it since the 1990s through CONAI, Germany since 2019 with the Verpackungsgesetz, France since 2020 with the AGEC law, Spain since 2022 with its packaging decree. The PPWR adds common requirements on design, recyclability and labelling, and coexists with these regimes rather than absorbing them.

The harmonised label is where the transition is most visible. Article 12 of the regulation provides for a single label with sorting instructions and a code that links to material information; the Commission must adopt the implementing acts by 12 August 2026, and the label applies from 12 August 2028. Until then each market keeps its own rules.

When the seller becomes the producer

The definition of producer is broader than most business owners assume. For EPR purposes, the producer is whoever places packaging on the market of a given country for the first time. For an Italian e-commerce business selling to private customers in Germany or France, the producer is the seller, with the cardboard box, the protective film and the tape used to ship. The courier and the supplier of the product stay outside the scope of the rule. It is the same criterion the EU AI Act applies to the deployer: European responsibility follows whoever places the product on the market or uses it.

The activation threshold is, in most national schemes, zero: a single parcel is enough to trigger the obligation. That feature sets EPR apart from other European duties, which grant exemptions below a certain size. The logic matches the principle: the cost of the packaging's end of life exists from the first item placed on the market.

Registration, representative and marking, market by market

The differences between the four main markets for Italian trade come down to three levers: registration in a register, appointment of a local representative, and physical marking of the packaging. The table summarises the position as of September 2026.

Penalties differ by an order of magnitude. In Germany, failing to register with LUCID carries a fine of up to 100,000 euros, and failing to join a dual system up to 200,000. In France, the absence of the unique identifier falls among sanctionable breaches, and missing Triman or Info-Tri labelling carries an administrative fine of up to 15,000 euros for a legal person. Italy applies an administrative penalty of between 5,200 and 40,000 euros for packaging labelling. In Spain the penalty framework is less codified in public sources, and it is worth checking the specific case.

Compliance costs for minimal volumes remain contained. A German licence with a dual system starts at around 20–40 euros a year, a French mandataire sits at around 190 euros a year per stream, and the public registrations — LUCID, the unique identifier and their Spanish equivalents — are free. More than the fee, what weighs is the time needed to work out which duties apply in each market.

The contested Triman and the 2028 harmonisation

The French Triman and Info-Tri requirement is the most exposed part of the framework, and also the most uncertain. On 17 July 2025 the European Commission referred France to the Court of Justice of the European Union for incompatibility with Articles 34–36 of the Treaty on the free movement of goods: the Commission argues that a mandatory national symbol obstructs the circulation of products labelled differently in other member states. The case is pending.

In the same period the PPWR is preparing a harmonised label that will make a specifically French symbol redundant from 2028. Between 2026 and 2028, a contested national requirement, an incoming harmonisation and uncertainty over the actual timetable coexist. For a company, this window is a factor to account for: compliance choices have different lifespans depending on the market.

Compliance as a data problem

The hard part lies in the data more than in the symbol. A company needs to know, for each market, which packaging has been placed on the market, in what quantity and under which regime. In an online shop the useful numbers come from the order and shipping flow: every parcel corresponds to a set of components — the box of a given size, the filler, the tape, the label — and the sum per market is what the periodic declarations must report.

The picture gets harder when there is more than one sales channel. A proprietary shop, a marketplace and a light B2B flow generate orders with different packaging formats, often shipped from different warehouses or by a third-party logistics provider. Joining orders, shipments and packaging composition to work out the kilograms of paper and plastic placed in each country is a reconciliation job that a spreadsheet holds up while there are two markets. Beyond that, the risk shifts from the symbol to the accounting of materials.

The issue stops being a matter of graphic design and becomes a problem of information architecture. The same logic applies to the process before the tools: before choosing the software that holds the records, a company needs to know which data are required, where they originate and who owns them. It applies to responsibility too, as an obligation managed through organisation rather than technology shows: compliance is demonstrated through data and roles, before tools.

Designing the online shop or reviewing the infrastructure

Companies facing the issue fall into two groups. For a company moving online now, compliance is part of designing the shop: if packaging data is structured by product and destination market from the start, the periodic declaration reduces to an extraction of data that already exist. The choice concerns the data model and the flows between platform, warehouse and shipping, before the specific software.

For a company that has been selling online for years, the infrastructure was built for the domestic market. The catalogue, the order management system and the warehouse know the product and the destination, and they rarely record the packaging composition. The work is to review those flows so that a datum which today does not exist in aggregate form becomes available, without rebuilding everything.

In both cases the useful decision concerns where to place responsibility for that oversight, before the stamp to buy. The difference between a company that ships and one that truly sells across several markets comes down to keeping its data in order.