The packaging regulation and the environmental contribution: two separate tracks
Membership of an extended producer responsibility scheme and payment of the environmental contribution do not discharge the obligations of Regulation (EU) 2025/40, and vice versa. They are two separate tracks: one concerns the management of packaging waste, the other concerns packaging as a product placed on the market.
- Legal reference
- Arts. 44-45
- Last updated
- Official text
- Regulation (EU) 2025/40
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The overlap between the two tracks is the source of the most frequent error: assuming that a position that has been in order for years also covers the obligations introduced by the regulation.
The two tracks, side by side
| Extended producer responsibility | Regulation (EU) 2025/40, product obligations | |
|---|---|---|
| Subject matter | Packaging waste and its recovery | Packaging placed on the market |
| Typical action | Registration, periodic declarations, contribution | Technical documentation, EU declaration of conformity |
| Source | National schemes established under Directive 2008/98/EC, referred to in Art. 45 | Arts. 5-15 and Annexes VII and VIII of the regulation |
| Who checks | The authority and the scheme joined | The market surveillance authorities (Arts. 58 and 62) |
What the regulation says about extended producer responsibility
Article 45, first paragraph:
"Producers shall be subject to extended producer responsibility under the schemes established pursuant to Articles 8 and 8a of Directive 2008/98/EC and this Section for packaging, including the packaging of packaged products, that they make available for the first time on the territory of a Member State or that they unpack without being an end user."
The regulation, therefore, refers to national schemes: it does not replace or unify them. It adds certain costs that contributions must cover, including those for labelling collection containers and those for surveys on the composition of unsorted municipal waste.
Article 44 introduces a new element: each Member State establishes a national register of producers, within eighteen months of the entry into force of the first implementing act provided for under that same article. Producers register in the register of each Member State in whose territory they make packaging or packaged products available for the first time. If the undertaking has appointed an organisation to fulfil producer responsibility, the obligation is discharged by that organisation, unless the Member State provides otherwise.
What remains a matter for Italian law
In Italy, extended producer responsibility for packaging is implemented by national waste legislation, and the environmental contribution is owed within that system, with its own declarations and deadlines.
The regulation does not touch that arrangement. It runs alongside it, and in time it will bring it into order through the producer register and the criteria for modulating contributions.
The two positions remain separate as evidence too: a payment receipt is not an EU declaration of conformity, and an EU declaration of conformity does not attest to any waste-related compliance.
The overlap, in full
An undertaking that has belonged to the national system for years, declares its quantities and pays the contribution can find itself with none of the documents the regulation requires: neither the technical documentation under Annex VII, nor the EU declaration of conformity under Annex VIII, nor the substance data that both presuppose.
That position does not answer a customer’s request, or an inspection. And under Article 62, the consequence of missing documentation is not a monetary penalty: it is the prohibition on making the packaging available, its recall or withdrawal from the market.
References
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 2024 on packaging and packaging waste, in OJ L of 22 January 2025. Applicable from 12 August 2026.
- Art. 44 · Register of producers
- Art. 45 · Extended producer responsibility
- Art. 46 · Producer responsibility organisations
- Art. 15 · Obligations of manufacturers
- Art. 62 · Formal non-compliance
- Annexes VII and VIII · Technical documentation and EU declaration of conformity
National framework: Legislative Decree No 152 of 3 April 2006, Part Four.
Official text of the regulation: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2025/40/oj