Brubru
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Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 is why a jumper's label reads "80 percent wool, 20 percent polyamide" in the same controlled vocabulary everywhere in the EU single market. Adopted in 2011 and applying since 8 May 2012, it harmonises which textile fibre names may be used and makes fibre-composition labelling compulsory, durable, legible and accessible. It is not a digital product passport act, but its naming-and-composition rules are the foundation the EU's newer textile circular-economy laws now build on.
What the Textile Labelling Regulation is, why it replaced three directives, and how it is structured
Before 2011, textile fibre names and composition labelling were governed by three separate instruments: Council Directive 73/44/EEC on ternary fibre mixtures, Directive 96/73/EC on binary mixtures, and Directive 2008/121/EC on textile names, each amended repeatedly. Because the rules are highly technical and need regular updating, the legislature replaced all three with a single Regulation, avoiding the need for every Member State to transpose each technical amendment separately and letting new fibre names apply simultaneously across the whole Union.
Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 was adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council under the ordinary legislative procedure, with its legal basis in Article 114 TFEU, the internal-market harmonisation article. Done at Strasbourg on 27 September 2011, signed by European Parliament President J. Buzek and Council President M. Dowgielewicz, and published in OJ L 272 on 18 October 2011. As a Regulation, it is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States, with no national transposition required.
Entry into force: the twentieth day following the 18 October 2011 publication, that is 7 November 2011 (Article 28). Application: the Regulation applies, and the three predecessor directives were repealed, from 8 May 2012 (Articles 27 and 28). Transitional sell-through: textile products that complied with the old Directive 2008/121/EC and were already placed on the market before 8 May 2012 could continue to be made available until 9 November 2014 (Article 26), so shops were not required to pull compliant old-label stock overnight.
This Regulation predates the EU's digital product passport legislation by well over a decade and creates no digital product passport obligation of its own. Its relevance to that newer regime is that it fixes the controlled vocabulary, the fibre names in Annex I, and the composition-labelling rules that any textile digital product passport data field for fibre composition has to build on. It also, in 2011, already asked the Commission to examine electronic labelling, a theme picked up again below.
28 Articles organised into General provisions, Textile fibre names & labelling, Market surveillance, and Final provisions
Sets the subject matter (Article 1): rules on textile fibre names, fibre-composition labelling and marking, labelling of non-textile parts of animal origin, and the quantitative analysis methods used to determine fibre composition. Scope (Article 2) covers textile products made available on the Union market, and extends to products with at least 80 percent textile fibres by weight, such as furniture, umbrella and mattress coverings, above defined thresholds. Two narrow exemptions apply: products contracted out to home-workers or independent firms without transfer of property for consideration, and customised products made up by self-employed tailors for consumers. Article 3 defines the core terms (textile product, textile fibre, labelling, marking, inclusive labelling, agreed allowance, and more). Article 4 states the general rule: a textile product may only be made available on the market if it is labelled, marked, or accompanied by commercial documents complying with the Regulation.
The operative core of the Regulation. It fixes which fibre names may be used (Article 5), the procedure for adding a new one (Article 6), the rules for "100 percent", "pure" and "all" (Article 7), fleece and virgin wool (Article 8), multi-fibre products and the descending-order composition rule (Article 9), decorative and antistatic fibres (Article 10), multi-component products (Article 11), non-textile parts of animal origin (Article 12), the specially listed products in Annex IV (Article 13), the durability and legibility of labels and markings (Article 14), who must supply the label (Article 15), the language and commercial use of fibre names (Article 16), and the derogations for inclusive labelling, products sold by the metre, and the Annex V and VI exemption lists (Article 17).
Article 18 puts national market surveillance authorities in charge of checking that a textile product's actual fibre composition matches what its label or marking states, under Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 and Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety. Article 19 sets the uniform methods, in Annex VIII or the harmonised standards replacing it, that laboratories must use to determine fibre composition. Article 20 fixes the tolerances that apply when comparing a label's stated composition with an analysed result.
Articles 21 and 22 empower the Commission to adopt delegated acts amending the Annexes to keep pace with technical progress and to add new textile fibre names. Article 23 required a Commission report by 8 November 2014 on new fibre-name requests. Article 24 required, by 30 September 2013, a forward-looking review of possible new labelling requirements, and Article 25 a study on hazardous substances and allergic reactions by the same date, both covered in full below. Article 26 sets the transitional sell-through window, Article 27 repeals the three predecessor directives, and Article 28 fixes entry into force and application.
The controlled vocabulary in Annex I, and the rules that make composition labelling compulsory
Article 5 restricts fibre-composition labels and markings to the textile fibre names set out in Annex I, and only for fibres whose nature genuinely matches that Annex's description; a listed name may not be used, on its own, as a root, or as an adjective, for a different fibre. Article 6 lets a manufacturer, or anyone acting on a manufacturer's behalf, apply to the Commission to add a new fibre name to Annex I, supported by a technical file meeting the minimum requirements of Annex II, including available scientific information on possible allergic reactions or other adverse effects on human health.
Article 4 makes fibre-composition labelling compulsory whenever a textile product is made available on the market. Article 14 requires that labelling and marking be durable, easily legible, visible and accessible and, where a label is used, securely attached. Labels or markings may be replaced or supplemented by accompanying commercial documents only in defined business-to-business or public-procurement supply-chain situations, never for a product reaching the final consumer.
Article 7 reserves these terms for a textile product composed exclusively of the same fibre. A narrow tolerance survives: up to 2 percent extraneous fibres by weight, or 5 percent for a product that has undergone a carding process, may still be labelled as exclusively one fibre, but only where that quantity is technically unavoidable in good manufacturing practice and is not added as a matter of routine.
Article 9 requires the name and percentage by weight of every constituent fibre, listed in descending order. A fibre accounting for up to 5 percent of total weight, or several fibres collectively accounting for up to 15 percent, may be lumped together as "other fibres" where they cannot easily be stated at the time of manufacture. Where composition is genuinely hard to determine at manufacture, "mixed fibres" or "unspecified textile composition" may be used instead.
Any textile product containing non-textile parts of animal origin must carry the phrase "Contains non-textile parts of animal origin" on its labelling or marking, whenever it is made available on the market. The labelling must not be misleading and must be presented so a consumer can easily understand it, letting shoppers make an informed choice about, for example, leather trims, fur or bone components attached to an otherwise textile product.
Article 16(3) requires labelling or marking to be provided in the official language, or languages, of the Member State on whose territory the product is made available to the consumer, unless that Member State provides otherwise. A special rule applies to bobbins, reels, skeins and other small quantities of sewing, mending and embroidery yarn: individually sold units may use any official EU institutional language, provided an inclusive label in the required national language is also present.
The economic operator placing the product on the market carries the duty; a narrow set of situations sits outside it
Article 15(1) puts the duty to supply the label or marking, and to ensure the accuracy of its information, on the manufacturer when a textile product is placed on the market. Where the manufacturer is not established in the Union, that duty falls to the importer instead.
Article 15(2) treats a distributor as a manufacturer for the purposes of the Regulation where it places a product on the market under its own name or trademark, attaches the label itself, or modifies the label's content. Otherwise, Article 15(3) still requires the distributor, when making a product available, to ensure it bears the appropriate labelling or marking, and Article 15(4) requires every operator in the chain to ensure other information cannot be confused with the fibre names and composition descriptions the Regulation lays down.
Article 2(3) and (4) exempt two narrow situations from the whole Regulation: textile products contracted out to persons working in their own homes, or to independent firms working from materials supplied to them without a transfer of property for consideration, and customised textile products made up by self-employed tailors for their customers. These exemptions apply only to the specific transactions described, not to any onward sale of the finished product.
Article 17 lists three further derogations. Products in Annex V, generally disposable or one-off items, need no fibre-name indication at all, unless a trademark or company name embeds a protected fibre term, in which case the ordinary rules bite again. Products in Annex VI that share the same type and fibre composition may be sold together under a single inclusive label. And textile products sold by the metre may show their composition on the length or roll instead of on each individual piece, provided every purchaser in the supply chain, including the final consumer, can still find out the composition.
How fibre composition is verified, and the tolerances that keep the labelling rules workable in practice
Extraneous fibres, meaning fibres other than those stated on the label, do not need to be declared up to 2 percent of total weight, or 5 percent for products that have undergone a carding process, provided the quantity is technically unavoidable in good manufacturing practice and not added as a matter of routine. A further 3 percent manufacturing tolerance applies between the stated composition and the percentages obtained from analysis. The two tolerances may be applied cumulatively only where the extraneous fibres found by analysis are of the same chemical type as a fibre already shown on the label. For manufacturing processes that genuinely require higher tolerances, the Commission may authorise them by delegated act, following a manufacturer's reasoned request submitted before the product is placed on the market.
When determining fibre content by analysis, an "agreed allowance", a defined moisture-regain value with conventional adjustment factors, is applied to the anhydrous mass of each fibre after removing the items listed in Annex VII that are excluded from the calculation. Annex IX sets two different agreed allowances for carded or combed fibre mixtures containing wool or animal hair; where a laboratory cannot establish whether a product was carded or combed, it may apply a single allowance to doubtful cases, to avoid inconsistent results between checks carried out across the Union.
Article 19(1) requires laboratories testing textile mixtures to use the uniform analysis methods in Annex VIII, or the harmonised standards introduced to replace them. The Regulation tasks the Commission with managing that transition, from the detailed methods written directly into the Regulation to a system based on harmonised standards, to simplify the legal text and keep the methods current with technical progress, while still ensuring consistent testing results across the internal market.
Checks on whether a textile product's actual fibre composition matches its labelled composition are carried out under the general EU market surveillance framework, Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 on accreditation and market surveillance, and Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety. This Regulation does not create a separate enforcement or penalty regime of its own; it relies on that existing market-surveillance architecture, with Member States responsible for checks and consequences at national level.
Article 24's forward-looking review already named electronic labelling and language-independent fibre symbols
Article 24 required the Commission to report to the European Parliament and the Council, by 30 September 2013, on possible new labelling requirements to give consumers accurate, relevant, intelligible and comparable information about textile products. Based on stakeholder consultation and existing European and international standards, the report had to examine, among other issues: an origin-labelling scheme with full traceability; a harmonised care-labelling system; a Union-wide uniform size-labelling system; an indication of allergenic substances; and, explicitly, electronic labelling and other new technologies, and the use of language-independent symbols or codes for the identification of fibres.
Article 25 separately required the Commission, also by 30 September 2013, to carry out a study evaluating whether there is a causal link between allergic reactions and chemical substances or mixtures used in textile products, and to submit legislative proposals within existing Union legislation where appropriate.
Article 24(3)(e)'s call for electronic labelling and language-independent symbols or codes to identify fibres is, in substance, the direction the ESPR's ecodesign requirements and digital product passport now take for textiles: a machine-readable, QR-code-accessible record of a product's composition and characteristics. This Regulation created no such obligation itself, and remains, fourteen years on, a labelling law rather than a digital product passport act. But the controlled vocabulary it fixed in Annex I, and the composition rules built around it, are exactly what any future textile DPP data field for fibre composition will need to reference.
The naming-and-composition foundation beneath the EU's newer textile circular-economy rules
Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 is not one of the 13 acts Brubru tracks in the EU Digital Product Passport legal architecture. It sits beneath that architecture instead, as the pre-existing law that already standardised how a textile product's fibre composition is named and stated, work the newer sustainability-focused instruments did not need to repeat.
The Waste Framework Directive textile amendment, Directive (EU) 2025/1892, extends producer responsibility to textiles and depends on accurate, standardised composition data to sort, reuse and recycle products effectively; that composition data is exactly what Regulation 1007/2011 already requires manufacturers to state and keep accurate.
The ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, sets the framework for product-specific ecodesign requirements and digital product passports, including for textiles once the relevant delegated acts are adopted. Any textile DPP will need a fibre-composition data field, and that field will draw on the Annex I vocabulary this Regulation already fixed in 2011.
Whatever new textile circular-economy obligation the EU adds next, whether extended producer responsibility, a destruction ban, or a digital product passport, it needs a common, enforceable answer to a basic question: what is this garment actually made of. Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 answered that question EU-wide in 2011, and every newer textile law inherits the answer rather than re-deriving it.
Load-bearing terms as used in Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011
Primary sources for Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011
Full text of Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 of 27 September 2011, 28 Articles and Annexes I to X:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32011R1007
CELEX number: 32011R1007 | OJ reference: OJ L 272, 18.10.2011, p. 1 | ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2011/1007/oj
Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, the framework act behind the future digital product passport, including for textiles:
Directive (EU) 2025/1892, extending extended producer responsibility to textiles, and relying on the composition data this Regulation already standardises:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32025L1892
Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 on accreditation and market surveillance, and Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety, the framework this Regulation's Article 18 relies on for enforcement:
Six tools to analyse, track, and work with this Regulation and the wider EU textiles circular-economy regime