Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/994 of 2 April 2024 laying down operational details of the product database established under Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 of the European Parliament and of the Council
Subject matter and scope
1. This Regulation sets out operational details for the functioning of the product database established in line with Article 12 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 and detailed rules applying to suppliers placing on the Union market:
(a)
energy-related products covered by delegated acts supplementing Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 and Directive 2010/30/EU;
(b)
tyres covered by Regulation (EU) 2020/740 or by delegated acts supplementing it.
2. Those operational details and rules relate to:
(a)
the verification process that allows natural persons and legal persons to become verified suppliers and to ensure confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of the information registered by them;
(b)
information required to register product models;
(c)
data exchange models and software release management;
(d)
availability of the system and of the data.
Definitions
For the purposes of this Regulation, the definitions in points (5) ‘authentication’, (12) ‘qualified electronic signature’, (19) ‘trust service provider’, (20) ‘qualified trust service provider’, (27) ‘qualified electronic seal’ and (30) ‘qualified certificate for electronic seal’ of Article 3 of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 and in point (16) ‘distributor’ of Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2020/740 shall apply.
The following definitions also apply:
(1)
‘EPREL’ or ‘European Product Registry for Energy Labelling’ means the product database established and maintained by the Commission in line with Article 12 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369;
(2)
‘verification process’ means the process by which a natural person or legal person provides evidence of identity and of establishment in the Union, entitling them to register products in EPREL;
(3)
‘Business Register Identifier’ or ‘Register ID’ means the alphanumerical code assigned by a Member State’s authority, or someone acting on its behalf, to the particular section or office of the business register assigning the business registration number to natural persons or legal persons performing a professional activity, such as business or trade. If the legal person is in the scope of Directive (EU) 2017/1132, such number shall be part of the unique identifier (EUID) referred to in Article 16(1) of the same Directive and in point 9 of the Annex to Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/1042 ( 10 ) ;
(4)
‘Business Registration Number’ means the alphanumerical code, attributed by a business register at national level to the legal person or to the natural person performing a professional activity and providing evidence of its identity and its establishment in the Member State where the register is established. If the person is in the scope of Directive (EU) 2017/1132, such number shall be part of the unique identifier (EUID) referred to in Article 16(1) of the same Directive and in point 9 of the Annex to the Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/1042;
(5)
‘verified supplier’ means an EPREL supplier that has successfully completed the supplier verification process in the EPREL compliance system according to Articles 4, 5 and 6;
(6)
‘unverified supplier’ means an EPREL supplier that has not yet successfully completed the supplier verification process in the EPREL compliance system, including those not having renewed the qualified electronic seal within the required deadline;
(7)
‘EPREL supplier’ means a natural person or legal person in its capacity to act as a supplier for registering product models in the product database;
(8)
‘data exchange model’ means an XML model used to define the data structure and semantics of the product data, by means of the XML markup language and which permits the data import of the product model’s parameter values from a supplier’s database to the product database;
(9)
‘EPREL compliance system’ means the database and the software for managing its content, accessible via the EPREL compliance website subject to user authentication, enabling suppliers to register both public and compliance data in the product database and also enabling Member State’s market surveillance authorities to perform their activities;
(10)
‘EPREL compliance website’ means the website providing access to the product database for compliance verification purposes, requiring user registration and authentication, where only Member State’s market surveillance authorities and Commission staff have access to any public and technical information of registered product models and to the EPREL supplier information;
(11)
‘EPREL public system’ means the database and the software for accessing its content, freely accessible via the EPREL public website, enabling visitors to consult the public data of any registered product model since its date of placing on the market;
(12)
‘EPREL public website’ means the freely accessible website enabling visitors to consult the public data of any registered product model since its date of placing on the market;
(13)
‘API’ or ‘Application Programming Interface’ means a set of definitions and protocols for building and integrating application software to share data;
(14)
‘business register’ or ‘trade register’ means a Member State’s national public sector body attributing business registration numbers to natural persons or legal persons performing a professional activity such as business or trade and providing evidence of their establishment in the Member State where the national public sector body is established;
(15)
‘GTIN’ or ‘Global Trade Item Number’ means a unique and internationally recognised identifier attributed by the GS1 international organization, used to identify trade items to facilitate accurate identification. GTINs can be encoded as barcode tags, affixed to products or to their packaging, or as Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags;
(16)
‘date of placing on the market’ means the date of placing on the market of the first unit of a product model;
(17)
‘date of end of placing on the market’ means the date of placing on the market of the last unit of a product model;
(18)
‘registered model’ or ‘registered product model’ means a model of a product, whose parameter values have been entered into EPREL. The registered model may not necessarily be publicly visible;
(19)
‘EPREL compliance production system’ means a copy of the compliance system, where the latest software versions are installed by the Commission and where suppliers register the real product models before placing them on the market;
(20)
‘EPREL compliance acceptance system’ means a system where the latest software versions of the compliance production system are installed by the Commission and where the suppliers can register a dummy supplier and dummy product models for testing purposes. Any new software version is first made available on this system and only made available on the EPREL compliance production system after the relevant test and acceptance period has elapsed;
(21)
‘transfer protocol’ means the protocol for electronic communication over the internet to securely exchange information between the computer systems of the supplier and of the Commission;
(22)
‘online portal’ means the website giving access to the public part and to the compliance part of EPREL and containing the information set out in point 2 of Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 and other relevant information on energy efficiency of products ( 11 ) ;
(23)
‘NTR’ means the acronym for identification based on an identifier from a national trade register, as in paragraph 5.1.4 of EN 319 412-1.
Verification requirement for suppliers
1. Suppliers of products specified in Article 1(1) points (a) and (b) shall be verified suppliers.
2. Only verified suppliers may register product models in EPREL and perform any modification relating to existing ones. This applies to both legal persons and to natural persons.
Verification of legal persons
1. Suppliers that are legal persons shall submit evidence of their identity and of their establishment within the Union by means of a qualified electronic seal supported by a qualified certificate for electronic seal, issued by a qualified trust service provider pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 910/2014. An electronic signature of the authorised representative of a supplier which is a legal person shall not be accepted because it does not provide evidence of the establishment in the Union of that legal person.
2. The qualified certificate for electronic seal, supporting the qualified electronic seal shall contain the legal person’s name precisely as registered in a Member State’s business register, including any space, punctuation or other special character(s). The certificate shall be compliant with EN 319 412-1 and with EN 319 412-3.
3. The ‘Subject’ field present in the qualified certificate for electronic seal shall have an ‘organizationIdentifier’ attribute that shall contain information using the following structure and order:
(a)
three-character legal person identity type reference set to the value ‘NTR’;
(b)
two-character ISO 3166 ( 12 ) country code, indicating the country of establishment;
(c)
hyphen-minus sign ‘-’ (U+002D);
(d)
the identifier according to the identity type reference for ‘NTR’ using the following structure and order, specified in Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/1042 as the European Unique Identifier (EUID):
(i)
the Business Register Identifier, for the particular section or office of the public register having attributed the business registration number to the legal person in question;
(ii)
dot-sign ‘.’ (U+002E);
(iii)
the Business Registration Number, as attributed to the legal person by the national business register in point (i) above.
The Country code, part of the EUID and preceding the abovementioned three fields, as well the verification digit, are optional.
4. Natural persons, who register models of suppliers that are legal persons, shall not undertake the electronic verification process in place of those legal persons.
Verification of natural persons
1. Suppliers that are natural persons shall submit evidence of their identity by means of a qualified electronic signature.
2. The qualified certificate for electronic signature supporting the qualified electronic signature shall contain the natural person’s name as registered in the Member State’s business or trade register, including any space, punctuation or other special character(s). The certificate shall be compliant with EN 319 412-1 and with EN 319 412-2.
3. A supplier that is a natural person shall also submit evidence of its own establishment within the Union and, if appropriate, of having received a written mandate as authorised representative of a manufacturer not established in the Union, to act on its behalf for registering in EPREL product models of that manufacturer, by means of the following additional information:
(a)
the Business Register Identifier, for the particular section or office of the public register which assigned the business or trade register number to the natural person in question at national level;
(b)
the Business Registration Number, as attributed to the natural person at national level;
(c)
a written mandate by the manufacturer(s) listing all brand/trademarks for which the mandate applies.
The abovementioned information in points (a) and (b) shall be communicated in a document:
(i)
digitally signed by the natural person;
(ii)
digitally sealed or digitally signed by the competent authority responsible at national level for the business or trade register or, in the impossibility of this, digitally sealed with confirmation of the truthfulness by a qualified trust service provider.
The abovementioned information in point (c) shall be communicated in a document:
(i)
digitally sealed by each of the non EU manufacturer(s); or
(ii)
digitally signed by the legal representative(s) of those non EU manufacturer(s).
Transitional measures to complete electronic verification by legal persons
1. In derogation to points (a) and (d) of Article 4(3) and until 22 April 2025, suppliers that are legal persons may submit a qualified electronic seal where the three-character legal person identity type reference may be set to one of the following values:
(a)
‘VAT’ for identification based on a national value added tax identification number;
(b)
‘PSD’ for identification based on national authorization number of a payment service provider under Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 13 ) (Payments Services Directive);
(c)
‘LEI’ for a global Legal Person Identifier as specified in ISO 17442 ( 14 ) . The 2-character ISO 3166-1 country code shall be set to ‘XG’;
(d)
two characters according to local definition within the specified country and name registration authority, identifying a national scheme that is considered appropriate for national and European level, followed by the character ‘:’ (colon).
The identifier (according to country and identity type reference) has to be in coherence to the three-character legal person identity type reference used.
2. By 22 April 2027, suppliers that have been verified with an electronic seal according to the format set under paragraph 1 shall renew their verification by providing a qualified electronic seal as set out in Article 4.
Product models registered by unverified suppliers
1. Models registered in EPREL by entities not verified shall not be listed in the search results in public EPREL website. When such a model is retrieved from EPREL by scanning a QR code or by any other means a text shall indicate that the model was registered by an unverified supplier.
2. The information on models registered by unverified suppliers shall not be exported by the means of application programming interfaces or by other export features.
3. The information and its accessibility in the compliance part remains unchanged.
Public and compliance contact points of suppliers
1. Suppliers shall identify in the public part of EPREL, as their public contact point, the contact details of the department or sector which ensures communication with the public in relation to product use and support, including a generic email address not containing personal data. Additional contact points may be made available from the supplier website, for different geographical or linguistic areas or countries.
2. Suppliers shall also identify in the compliance part of EPREL, as their compliance contact point, the contact details of the department or sector that ensures cooperation with market surveillance authorities, including a telephone number, a physical address within the EU and a generic email address not containing personal data.
3. Different contact points may be provided for each product model and in the public and compliance parts.
4. The supplier is responsible for the correctness and shall update the details of the provided contact points.
Transfer of registered models between suppliers
Registered product models may be transferred to a verified supplier that takes over the obligations from the previous supplier in relation to those product models from the date indicated for the transfer.
Access to EPREL by market surveillance authorities
1. Member States market surveillance authorities shall have access to the EPREL compliance part via a single national administrator who shall be the only official contact person for the Commission.
2. Member States market surveillance authorities shall communicate to the Commission the name and contact details of the single national administrator and any change of it. They may further delegate access rights under their own full responsibility in consideration of the security, integrity and confidentiality of the data.
3. Personal data included in the market surveillance authority’s user profiles shall be managed by the Commission in line with the Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 and shall be deleted when the relevant EPREL account is deleted unless the user has performed operations that need to be logged for the purposes of traceability of access to suppliers’ technical documentation.
Management of supplier user profiles and verification
1. Each supplier shall be responsible for the management of the access rights to their own data by members of its own EPREL supplier organisation. At least one user shall be appointed as being responsible for the supplier and for managing other user profiles and their access rights.
2. Any personal data which is entered as part of the supplier user’s profile will be dealt with in accordance with the Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.
3. Users’ personal data shall be deleted simultaneously to the deletion of their users’ account, unless:
(a)
these data are necessary to legally identify the supplier;
(b)
they are necessary to track access to technical model information.
4. An EPREL supplier user profile that is inactive for over one year, after a double email alert, shall be blocked, unless the user profile is the only responsible for the supplier. Personal information of the user shall be deleted automatically one year after the day of blocking the account unless:
(a)
keeping these data is necessary to legally identify the supplier;
(b)
the user has performed operations that need to be logged in accordance with article 12 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369.
5. The supplier shall be responsible for managing the electronic verification process.
6. The supplier shall be responsible for ensuring that the EPREL supplier data is updated in case of any relevant change, including any change of the legal representative.
7. The Commission may review at regular intervals the information associated to the verification process. If the information no longer corresponds to what is registered in EPREL, the Commission shall request the supplier to pass the verification process again within three months.
8. A previously verified supplier shall lose status of ‘verified’ if it appears to be inactive based on activity logs for over one year and is not responsive after a double email alert. Article 7 applies in such a case.
9. Where a supplier has lost its status of verified supplier in accordance with paragraph 8 above, the date of end of placing on the market of all its registered models shall be set by the EPREL system, and marked as set by the system.
Parameters necessary to identify or differentiate product models
1. For each registered product model, the Commission may provide suppliers the possibility of voluntarily providing values for the following parameters, when not already included in the specific Delegated Regulation on the product group under Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 or in Regulation (EU) 2020/740:
(a)
the GTIN, where applicable;
(b)
the Member States where they place their products on the market;
(c)
in duly justified cases and after consultation of stakeholders, other parameters not part of the conformity assessment by the supplier and of the compliance verification by market surveillance authorities, which are necessary, in line with provision as from Article 12(11) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369;
(d)
information of the kind referred to in Article 16(3) point (d) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369.
2. Parameters which are listed in paragraph 1 above may be made available in the EPREL public website as information complementary to the Product Information Sheet.
Placing and end of placing on the market of product models
1. The registration by a supplier of a product model in EPREL shall be deemed completed only after all the following parameter values have been entered and the relevant documents have been uploaded in EPREL for each model:
(a)
all values related to the parameters and documents required under Regulation (EU) 2017/1369, Regulation (EU) 2020/740 or any delegated act adopted under those regulations applicable to the product;
(b)
the date of placing on the market of the first unit of the particular model.
2. The EPREL compliance system shall confirm the completeness of the parameter values entered as part of the registration of the model.
3. The date and time of placing on the market is determined based on Central European Time (CET) or Central European Summer Time (CEST), as applicable.
4. As from the date under paragraph 3 above, the information entered by the supplier shall become accessible to market surveillance authorities and the public part shall become public.
5. The date of end of placing on the market of each product model may be entered as a future date or shall be entered in EPREL within 90 days after its occurrence and may be changed or deleted by the supplier in case the model continues to be placed on the market.
Facilitating access to model registrations in EPREL
1. In order to facilitate the display of labels or its class and range, including in online distance selling, in visual advertisement, in technical promotional material and on the internet, suppliers shall communicate the EPREL model registration number to dealers or to distributors, as applicable.
2. To allow for the consultation of a model’s registration in EPREL, the dealer or the distributor shall ensure that the QR code is readable when putting a product model or tyre in display for sale.
Data exchange model and software release management
1. Suppliers shall register product models either by using the interactive EPREL compliance website or by uploading the model data using the latest version of the data exchange model available. This applies, in particular, to the information in the tables on the product information sheet and to technical information in the relevant delegated act.
2. Any modification in the data exchange model, if requiring modifications of the software used by suppliers, shall be announced by the Commission and made available for preliminary testing in the EPREL compliance acceptance system at least two months before it is deployed in the EPREL compliance production system.
3. Advanced notice is only required if the change involves a malfunction or error on the supplier’s side or any incorrect data upload in the EPREL compliance system.
4. The obligation to upload product model data using a new data exchange model shall only apply to the registration of new models.
5. Any modification in the transfer protocol requiring modifications of the software used by suppliers shall be announced by the Commission and made available, duly documented, in the EPREL compliance acceptance system at least four months before it is deployed in the EPREL compliance production system.
Maintenance, system availability and data availability
1. The Commission shall make available, via the online portal, the guidelines and instructions on how to register and manage models in the EPREL compliance system.
2. The Commission shall provide a helpdesk service to ensure suppliers and market surveillance authorities receive technical support. The helpdesk service shall be available during Commission working days and during normal working hours, as determined yearly in the Commission Decision on public holidays for staff of the European institutions in Brussels and Luxembourg. Those working days shall be published on the online portal. However, technical support for urgent requests shall be ensured between 27 and 31 December.
3. Written exchanges between suppliers and the helpdesk shall be stored for six months after the issue has been closed and made available to market surveillance authorities upon request.
4. The Commission may suspend the availability of the compliance system or of the EPREL public system, without prior notice, as result of a malfunction or of a cyber-attack or any urgent security measure and keep the systems inaccessible until a safe situation is re-established.
5. In case registration is prevented by temporary unavailability or malfunctioning of the EPREL compliance system, the Commission shall record data and time of unavailability and keep a record of the unavailability and make it available to market surveillance authorities and suppliers upon request for not less than five years.
6. Both the compliance and the EPREL public systems shall be accessible at all times, except during necessary and previously announced periods of maintenance activities, such as deployment of new software releases. The Commission shall issue an advance notice of inaccessibility on the compliance website or on the public website, as applicable.
7. Neither the Commission nor suppliers shall be held liable for any loss of data entered in EPREL resulting from causes independent of their will.
Public data availability
The Commission shall make the public parameter values, label and product information sheet of registered models available by the means of Application Programming Interfaces (API), subject to acceptance of terms of use.
Inappropriate or fraudulent use of EPREL
Where the Commission identifies inappropriate or fraudulent activity, including linked to massive data download, it shall take the necessary measures to avoid abuse of EPREL.
Personal data
1. The following personal data shall be stored in EPREL to ensure the verification of identity of suppliers:
(a)
first and last name of the person legally entitled to act as a legal representative for the supplier;
(b)
professional email address.
2. Users of EPREL accounts for suppliers and for market surveillance authorities shall provide the following information:
(a)
first and last name;
(b)
professional email address.
3. Personal data collected by virtue of the present Regulation shall be processed in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 as applicable.
Entry into force and application
This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union .
It shall apply from the same day. Articles 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 and 15 shall apply from 22 October 2024.
Source: EUR-Lex (Publications Office of the EU), © European Union, reuse permitted under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU.
