Brubru
EU policy intelligence
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 lays down the common details and format large enterprises, and from 2030 medium-sized ones, must use to disclose how many unsold consumer products they discard every year, why, and what happens to them. It does not ban destroying unsold goods, that ban sits in a separate delegated act, but it operationalises the ESPR's disclose-and-discourage regime with a single standard reporting template that every large company selling into the EU will have to fill in, publish on its website, and keep evidence for.
What the unsold goods disclosure Regulation is, why it exists, and how it is structured
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 lays down the common details and format for the disclosure of information on discarded unsold consumer products, an obligation that Article 24 of the ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, already places on large enterprises. This Regulation does not itself prohibit the destruction of unsold goods, that prohibition and its legitimate exceptions sit in a separate delegated act made under Article 25 of the ESPR. What this Regulation does is standardise the how: the exact data points, the exact visual format, the exact product-category delimitation, and the exact verification approach that every disclosure must follow.
This is a Commission Implementing Regulation, adopted by the Commission alone at Brussels on 9 February 2026 and signed by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, published in OJ L, 2026/2 on 10 February 2026. Its legal basis is Article 24(3) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the ESPR, and it was adopted in accordance with the opinion of the committee established under Article 73 of that Regulation.
Do not conflate them. Entry into force: this Regulation entered into force on the twentieth day following its 10 February 2026 publication, that is 2 March 2026 (Article 7). Application: the disclosure format itself only becomes mandatory from 2 March 2027 (Article 7), giving companies a year to prepare. Underlying duty: recital 8 records that the deferral of this Regulation's application is without prejudice to the fact that the obligation to disclose under Article 24(1) of the ESPR itself has existed since the first full financial year after the ESPR's own entry into force on 18 July 2024, this Regulation simply supplies the common format that duty was always going to need.
Brubru tracks 13 acts in the EU Digital Product Passport legal architecture, the ESPR itself, the DPP registry Implementing Regulation, product-specific laws such as the Batteries, Construction Products, Toy Safety and Detergents Regulations, the harmonised standards Decision, and this pair of unsold-goods acts, the disclosure format here and the destruction ban alongside it. Together they turn the ESPR's ambition of a genuinely circular economy into enforceable, checkable obligations.
Seven short articles, each doing one job
Establishes the details and format for the disclosure of information on discarded unsold consumer products. It applies to products discarded in each financial year from the first full financial year after the date of application, and economic operators must disclose within 12 months after the end of that financial year.
The visual presentation and content of the disclosure must comply with the format set out in Annex I. Companies already subject to CSRD sustainability reporting under Articles 19a or 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU may include the Annex I information in that report instead, and simply link to it from their website, provided it clearly states where the discarding information appears.
Products are grouped using Combined Nomenclature (CN) codes at the first two digits by default. The products listed in Annex II must instead be delimited at the first four digits, for more precise reporting where the two-digit level would be too coarse.
Economic operators must keep the documentation needed to demonstrate the delivery and reception of discarded unsold consumer products, including statements from the waste treatment operators that received them, for five years after the disclosure of information on those products.
National competent authorities verify compliance following the risk-based principles and procedure set out in Annex III, and must inform other Member States' authorities where non-compliance appears relevant beyond their own territory.
The Commission must review this Regulation, considering the experience gained implementing it, in particular the relevance of the Annex I format, the Annex II product-category delimitation, and the verification approach, and present the results, with a draft revision proposal if appropriate, no later than 2 March 2031.
The Regulation entered into force on the twentieth day following its publication in the Official Journal, 2 March 2026, and applies from 2 March 2027. It is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States, as befits a Regulation rather than a Directive.
Company size and timing, drawn from Article 24(1) of the ESPR
Recital 3 is explicit: where a company donates unsold consumer products, it has not discarded them, so donated products are not covered by this disclosure obligation at all. The regime targets discarding as waste, for any waste treatment operation, preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery including energy recovery, or disposal, not the redistribution of goods that still find a use.
The standard data points every disclosure must contain, one line per product category and per reason for discarding
| Data point | What it captures |
|---|---|
| Legal entity identity | Name and identifier of the disclosing entity, using the European unique identifier (EUID) under Directive (EU) 2017/1132, or another officially recognised identifier, plus whether the disclosure is standalone or consolidated across subsidiaries |
| Financial year | Start and end date of the reporting period |
| Product category | CN code (two or four digits, per Annex II) and description |
| Number of units discarded | Per product category, may be estimated from an accurately determined total weight |
| Total weight discarded (kg) | Per product category, and whether packaging is included in that weight |
| Reason for discarding | Referencing, where applicable, the legitimate reasons in delegated acts adopted under Article 25(5) ESPR; a separate line per reason if a category is discarded for more than one reason |
| Waste treatment split | Percentage delivered to preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery (for example energy recovery), disposal, or unknown treatment |
| Total destruction (%) | Defined as the sum of recycling, other recovery and disposal, excludes preparing for reuse and unknown |
| Prevention measures | Measures already taken in the preceding financial year, and measures planned for the future, to prevent destruction of unsold products |
Where the exact number of units or exact weight is not known, one may be estimated from the other, provided the disclosed value carries a "±" to signal it is an estimate. Multiple items sold together, such as a drill with drill bits, or a cosmetics kit, may be counted as one unit even if it spans more than one CN code.
Two-digit CN codes by default, four-digit for the products Annex II names specifically
Recital 6 explains the choice: the Combined Nomenclature (CN), set out in Annex I to Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87, is a widely known classification system used across sectors, so building the disclosure obligation on it minimises new administrative burden. In most cases the first two digits of the CN code are enough to identify the relevant consumer product category. For a defined list of products, however, two digits are too coarse, so Annex II lists those categories at four-digit level instead.
Annex II names around 40 four-digit CN headings across several sectors. Representative examples include:
Annex II is explicit: products listed there that are components, intermediate products, or products not primarily intended for consumers, are not covered by the disclosure obligation, even if they fall under the same CN heading. The scope is consumer products specifically, not every item that shares a customs classification with one.
Five years of documentation, and a risk-based inspection approach for national authorities
Economic operators must keep the information and documentation needed to demonstrate the delivery and reception of discarded unsold consumer products, including statements from the waste treatment operators that received and treated them, for five years after the disclosure of information on those products.
Competent national authorities organise verification on a risk basis, weighing:
Authorities check, in order: whether the information was disclosed at all on an easily accessible page (or properly linked, per Article 2(2)); whether it follows the Annex I format; whether the disclosed number or weight matches documentation obtained from waste treatment operators, with a difference of less than 10% treated as compliant; whether the disclosed waste-treatment split matches what the receiving waste treatment operator actually reports; and whether any disclosed derogation is backed by the documentation required under the relevant Article 25(5) delegated act, in which case it is presumed applicable.
Article 5(2) requires a competent national authority that considers non-compliance relevant to one or more other Member States to inform those authorities, so a company disclosing across several EU markets cannot expect enforcement to stay siloed at national level.
One half of the ESPR's disclose-and-discourage pair, inside the wider DPP and circular-economy architecture
Article 24 of the ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, creates the disclosure obligation this Regulation formats. Article 25 of the ESPR is where the actual destruction rules live, including the legitimate reasons a company may still destroy unsold goods, such as product safety, hygiene, or intellectual property protection concerns, or a legal requirement to phase out certain products.
A separate Delegated Regulation, (EU) 2026/296, sets out the ban on destroying unsold consumer products under Article 25 of the ESPR, and the delegated acts on legitimate derogations this Regulation's Annex I and Annex III both refer back to. Read together, the two acts form a single policy pair: one bans (with limited, documented exceptions), the other makes what actually gets discarded, and why, publicly visible and checkable.
This disclosure Regulation is one of 13 acts Brubru tracks in the EU Digital Product Passport legal architecture, alongside the ESPR itself, the DPP registry Implementing Regulation, the harmonised standards Decision, and sectoral laws such as the Batteries, Construction Products, Toy Safety and Detergents Regulations. It is the transparency layer for one specific circular-economy failure mode, discarding stock instead of reusing or recycling it, inside that broader architecture.
From the ESPR's own entry into force to the Article 6 review deadline
Load-bearing terms as used in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2
Primary sources for Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2
Full text of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 of 9 February 2026, seven Articles, three Annexes:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32026R0002
CELEX number: 32026R0002 | OJ reference: OJ L, 2026/2, 10.2.2026 | ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2026/2/oj
Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, whose Article 24 creates the disclosure obligation and whose Article 24(3) is this Regulation's legal basis:
Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 of 23 July 1987 on the tariff and statistical nomenclature and on the Common Customs Tariff, whose Annex I provides the CN codes used in Annex III of this Regulation:
Six tools to analyse, track, and work with this Regulation and the wider ESPR circular-economy regime