A customer has asked me for the packaging declaration of conformity: what do I do?

Before answering the customer, one thing must be established: whether the obligation falls on the undertaking.

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First: who must draw up the declaration

Not every operator. The regulation draws a distinction.

The manufacturer is required to draw it up, and the notion is broader than the word suggests. Under Article 21, an importer or distributor is also considered a manufacturer if it places packaging on the market under its own name or trademark, or modifies packaging already placed on the market in a way that affects its compliance.

In practice: if the product leaves the undertaking in packaging carrying its trademark, the obligation is its own, even when the packaging is bought from someone else.

The distributor in the proper sense, i.e. one who resells without applying its own trademark and without modifying the packaging, does not draw up the declaration, but must verify that the manufacturer has done so and retain the information.

If the customer asks a mere distributor for the declaration, the correct response is not a refusal: it is to identify the manufacturer and pass on the declaration received.

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Second: the document to prepare

What the customer is asking for is the EU declaration of conformity under Article 39. It has an eight-point structure set out in Annex VIII and is drawn up for each type of packaging.

The structure point by point, with the PDF template, is on the page on the packaging declaration of conformity.

The declaration does not stand on its own: it states that requirements are met, and this must be demonstrable in the technical documentation of Annex VII, point 2. The customer receives the declaration. The technical documentation stays with the undertaking, and it is what is produced to the authority.

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Third: the missing data

This is the most common situation. The composition of materials, the heavy metals concentration, the PFAS values for packaging intended for contact with food: these are pieces of information the undertaking does not hold, because it buys the packaging.

The information lies with the supplier, and Article 16 places the obligation to transmit it on the supplier.

The heading of the article is explicit: "Information obligations of suppliers of packaging or packaging materials". The supplier must make available to the manufacturer all the information necessary to demonstrate the conformity of the materials supplied.

Requesting that data is enforcing a duty, not a commercial courtesy. It should be made in writing, citing the article, and the reply should be retained together with the technical documentation, which must indicate who the data came from.

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Fourth: retention

Drawing up the documents does not exhaust the obligation.

Annex VII, point 4 requires the declaration and the technical documentation to be kept available to the national authorities for five years from the placing on the market of single-use packaging and for ten years in the case of reusable packaging. A copy is made available to the competent authorities on request.

There is also the traceability obligation under Article 22: every economic operator must be able to tell the market surveillance authorities, on request, the identity of whoever supplied it with packaging or packaged products and of whoever received them, for the same five- and ten-year periods.

These periods run from the placing on the market of each item of packaging, not from the date the document was drawn up.

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What to pass on to the customer

In most cases the customer asks for the EU declaration of conformity, not the entire technical documentation.

If the tender specification expressly requires the technical documentation too, it is worth checking what is actually needed: the documentation contains process and supply information the undertaking has no interest in disclosing, and the regulation does not require it to be transmitted to customers. The obligation to produce it runs towards the authorities.

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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. 15 · Obligations of manufacturers
• Art. 16 · Information obligations of suppliers of packaging or packaging materials
• Art. 19 · Obligations of distributors
• Art. 21 · Cases in which the obligations of manufacturers apply to importers and distributors
• Art. 22 · Identification of economic operators
• Art. 39 · EU declaration of conformity
• Annex VII, point 2 · Content of the technical documentation
• Annex VII, point 4 · Retention periods
• Annex VIII · Template for the EU declaration of conformity

Official text: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2025/40/oj