ESPR, Battery Rules and CBAM: Don't Confuse Them

Three acronyms turn up in the same conversations about sustainable products — ESPR, battery rules and CBAM — and they are often confused. That mistake can cost time and money, because each instrument does something entirely different. This article shows exactly where the lines between them run, so you can map your obligations without guessing.

Why the distinction matters

Confusing these regulations leads to bad implementation decisions. A company might build a product passport thinking it satisfies an emissions duty — or report emissions believing it is creating a passport. Neither action substitutes for the other, and treating them as one job is the most common route to a compliance gap.

Each of the three acts has a different purpose, a different scope and a different addressee. Before you start any implementation, you need to know which rule applies to you in the first place. Below we take them one at a time.

ESPR: the framework that introduces the passport

The ESPR — Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 on ecodesign for sustainable products — is a horizontal framework. It introduces the Digital Product Passport (DPP) mechanism itself, but it does not, on its own, define what data a specific product must carry.

The details for individual product groups come from delegated acts, adopted separately for textiles, furniture, electronics and further sectors over time. ESPR is therefore an umbrella: it defines what a passport is and how it works, while the substance of the requirements is written sector by sector. Of the three regulations, it is the broadest in reach.

The Battery Regulation: the first product passport

The battery passport does not come from ESPR but from a separate act — the Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542. That instrument establishes a battery passport at single-unit level, and it applies from 18 February 2027.

This is an important reference point: the battery passport is the first fully implemented product passport in the EU. Conceptually it belongs to the same family as the ESPR DPP — a structured data record linked to a physical product. That is why batteries are treated as a preview of what awaits later sectors: the pattern they set is the pattern others will follow. We cover it in depth in the battery passport 2027.

CBAM: a border mechanism, not a passport

Here lies the biggest misunderstanding. CBAM — the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, Regulation (EU) 2023/956 — is not a product passport. It is a carbon-pricing and border instrument, built to a completely different purpose.

CBAM applies to imports of certain carbon-intensive goods and involves reporting embedded emissions and paying a charge at the border, linked to the EU emissions-trading system. Its full regime applies from 1 January 2026. In other words, CBAM asks "how much emission is embedded in this import, and what is the charge for it?" — not "where is the digital record of this product?" It is a fundamentally different mechanism from a passport.

Who each instrument touches

The easiest way to remember the differences is to look at the addressee of each rule:

• ESPR (2024/1781) — manufacturers and importers of products covered by successive delegated acts; the duty is to build and maintain a passport.
• Battery Regulation (2023/1542) — operators placing batteries on the market; the duty is a per-unit battery passport from 18 February 2027.
• CBAM (2023/956) — importers of specific carbon-intensive goods; the duty is to report emissions and settle a border charge.

A single company can fall under more than one of these regimes at once — an importer of batteries may have passport duties and, for other goods, CBAM duties in parallel. Mapping them separately is the only way to see the overlap clearly.

The key difference in one line

Keep a simple schema in mind. The battery passport is a product passport (a DPP). CBAM is emissions reporting and a border charge — it is not a passport. ESPR is the overarching framework that introduces passports in the first place.

This distinction organises your thinking about compliance. The data you gather for a passport will not satisfy a CBAM duty, and a CBAM report will not replace a passport record. The two are different deliverables, even when they draw on some of the same underlying product information.

A note on the CBAM de-minimis threshold

CBAM provides some simplification for smaller importers. According to the sources, the mechanism includes a de-minimis threshold — for imports below 50 tonnes per year — introduced by Regulation (EU) 2025/2083. Treat that figure as indicative and verify it against your own situation, since thresholds of this kind can be refined.

If your volume is small, some CBAM obligations may not reach you — but that does not release you from passport duties if you sell, say, batteries. We discuss the threshold in more detail in CBAM de-minimis.

How to organise this internally

Start with a map: which of your products are batteries, which will fall under ESPR delegated acts, and which you import as carbon-intensive goods. The same table will show where obligations overlap and where they are entirely separate, which is exactly the clarity most teams lack.

Only on that basis should you choose tools. A passport and an emissions report are different artefacts, even if they can draw on the same source data about a product. For the full calendar of obligations, see the ESPR timeline.

Key takeaways

• ESPR (2024/1781) is a horizontal framework that introduces the Digital Product Passport.
• The battery passport comes from Regulation (2023/1542) and applies from 18 February 2027.
• CBAM (2023/956) is a carbon-border mechanism, not a passport; full regime from 1 January 2026.
• One company can fall under several regimes at once — they do not replace one another.
• CBAM provides an indicative de-minimis threshold for small importers.

See how CyfroPass helps you organise product data and build a passport where one is required. Visit cyfropass.pl and start with the products whose obligations arrive earliest.