Questions and answers

From 18 February 2027, products placed on the market with incorporated portable batteries are subject to the default rule of end-user removability and replaceability throughout the product's lifetime. The obligation applies to the whole portable battery, not to individual cells or other parts inside it.

Products incorporating LMT batteries must allow an independent professional to remove and replace the LMT battery and the individual cells in its pack throughout the product's lifetime.

A portable battery is sealed, weighs no more than 5 kg, is not designed specifically for industrial use, and is not an EV, LMT, or SLI battery. An LMT battery is a sealed traction battery weighing no more than 25 kg for a wheeled vehicle powered by an electric motor alone or by motor and human power; it excludes an electric vehicle battery. Apply the complete Article 3 definitions to the product rather than classifying it by size or marketing name alone.

The Commission updated its interpretation in Notice C(2026) 5032 final, dated 14 July 2026. Use that notice for current guidance alongside Article 11 and any applicable delegated act. Its explanations and examples are non-binding; the notice alone does not establish a product exemption.

A portable battery is readily removable by the end user when it can be removed with commercially available tools. Removal cannot require proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents. A specialised tool is permissible only if it is supplied free of charge with the product.

The Commission notice explains the end user as an adult without specific experience or qualifications for removing or replacing batteries. A design review should therefore test whether the published instructions, tool assumptions, fasteners, connectors, adhesives, enclosure, and hazard controls match that user profile.

For LMT batteries, Article 11 itself uses independent professionals as the required removal and replacement actor. The Commission notice describes independent professionals as independent operators with the technical competence and qualification to repair the product, or to restore battery function when cell-level work is performed.

For portable batteries, professional-only removal is a derogation from the end-user rule. Article 11 supports this only for listed categories, such as certain wet-environment appliances where safety requires it and certain professional medical imaging, radiotherapy, and in vitro diagnostic medical devices. The wet-environment derogation needs product documentation showing that end-user replacement would compromise safety and that redesign is not possible with the current state of the art without severely affecting health and safety or product performance and functionality.

Article 11 removes the portable-battery end-user obligation where continuity of power supply and a permanent battery connection are necessary for user and appliance safety, or for data integrity where the product's main function is to collect and supply data.

The Commission notice gives non-binding examples and explains the data-integrity boundary: data collection as an additional feature is not enough, and the derogation does not apply where the product's primary data function presents no integrity risk, for example because it uses non-volatile memory. Each claimed derogation needs evidence for every condition in Article 11(3).

Article 11 requires products incorporating portable batteries to have instructions and safety information for use, removal, and replacement. The information must remain online on a public website and be easily understandable to end users. For both portable and LMT batteries, the Commission notice strongly recommends including replacement instructions and the technical specifications a compatible battery must meet.

For products placed on the market from 18 February 2027, portable and LMT batteries must be available as spare parts for at least five years after the last unit of the equipment model is placed on the market, at a reasonable and non-discriminatory price for independent professionals and end users. Software must not impede replacement with a compatible battery or compatible key components.

The Article 11 evidence file should let a product, legal, quality, or market-surveillance reviewer trace the incorporated battery category to the design choice. It should also show that the public instructions, spare-parts route, and software behavior match the product placed on the market.

A derogation record should identify the exact Article 11 basis, the facts satisfying every condition, the internal approval, and any applicable requirements under other EU product law. For a delegated category, also record the act's Official Journal publication, entry-into-force date, and product criteria before relying on it.

The first group comprises industrial batteries with a capacity greater than 2 kWh, except batteries with exclusively external storage, electric vehicle batteries, and starting, lighting and ignition batteries. The battery must contain cobalt, lead, lithium, or nickel in active materials. Documentation of recovered-content shares starts on the later of 18 August 2028 or 24 months after the Article 8 delegated methodology enters into force.

LMT batteries are phased in separately. Their information-documentation requirement starts on 18 August 2033 when they contain one of the four listed materials, and they join the minimum-share requirement on 18 August 2036.

An LMT battery is a sealed traction battery weighing 25 kg or less for a wheeled vehicle powered by an electric motor alone or by motor and human power; it excludes an electric vehicle battery. An SLI battery is designed to supply starting, lighting, or ignition power and may also provide auxiliary or backup power in vehicles, other transport, or machinery. Classification depends on the complete definitions in Article 3, not only the product's trade name.

Article 8(4) excludes a battery that was already placed on the market or put into service before it underwent preparation for re-use, preparation for repurposing, repurposing, or remanufacturing. Record the battery's earlier market or service status before relying on this exclusion.

The Article 8 material list is narrow: cobalt, lead, lithium, and nickel. For cobalt, lithium, and nickel, the documented share concerns material present in active materials and recovered from battery manufacturing waste or post-consumer waste. For lead, the documented share concerns lead present in the battery and recovered from waste.

Copper, graphite, manganese, steel, aluminium, plastics, and a battery-wide recycled-content total are outside the four-material calculation stated in Article 8. Article 8(6) allows the Commission to add materials by delegated act where battery-chemistry market developments justify it, so teams should check the current consolidated rule before fixing a long-term material list.

From 18 August 2031, technical documentation for the first group must demonstrate minimum recovered shares of 16% cobalt, 85% lead, 6% lithium, and 6% nickel. Apply only the percentage for a listed material present in the battery under the Article 8 trigger; do not average the four percentages into one battery score.

From 18 August 2036, the minimum shares become 26% cobalt, 85% lead, 12% lithium, and 15% nickel. The covered categories then include industrial batteries above 2 kWh except those with exclusively external storage, EV batteries, LMT batteries, and SLI batteries.

Article 8 states these percentages but also requires the Commission to assess them after the methodology act enters into force and no later than 31 December 2028. The Commission may amend the targets by 18 August 2029 where its assessment justifies a change. Recheck the consolidated legal text before using the percentages in a release decision.

Article 8 documentation is organized by battery model, calendar year, and manufacturing plant. Annex VIII requires technical documentation to include a study supporting the recycled-content share, calculations made under the Article 8 delegated methodology, and the evidence and information that determine the input data.

Under Annex VIII's production-quality-assurance route, the quality system must describe how the parameters and data needed to calculate and update the recycled-content share are monitored. The notified body checks the reliability of the data and proper implementation of the methodology. Annex VIII also requires the manufacturer to keep the technical documentation available to national authorities for 10 years after the battery is placed on the market.

No. Article 8 requires the Commission to adopt a delegated act by 18 August 2026 establishing the battery-model calculation and verification methodology and the documentation format. The first information duty begins on the later of 18 August 2028 or 24 months after that act enters into force, so its entry-into-force date controls the first-group start date. Before finalizing a calculation, verify whether the act has been adopted and entered into force and check its transition terms.

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/606 is related but different. It establishes methodology and documentation for recycler recycling-efficiency rates and recovery-of-materials rates from waste batteries, including cobalt, copper, lead, lithium, and nickel. Those recycler records can be relevant upstream evidence, but they should not be cited as the Article 8 battery-model recycled-content methodology.

Annex XIII starts with a public category for information relating to the battery model. Teams should treat this as model-level information that can be shown to the general public, not as live operating data for a specific battery in use.

The public model-level group covers information such as Annex VI general battery information, material composition, carbon footprint information, responsible sourcing information, recycled content information, selected performance characteristics, marking information, the EU declaration of conformity, and waste-battery prevention and management information. Do not publish a custom expanded list unless each field is mapped back to Annex XIII or a delegated act that changes it.

Annex XIII creates restricted groups rather than a single private bucket. Some battery-model information is available only to persons with a legitimate interest and the Commission, some test-report information is available only to notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission, and individual-battery information is available only to persons with a legitimate interest.

Design access by role because repairers, remanufacturers, second-life operators, recyclers, purchasers, authorities, notified bodies, and the Commission do not all receive the same view. Article 77 requires the Commission to specify which persons count as having a legitimate interest and what they may download, share, publish, or re-use through implementing acts due by 18 August 2026. Until the applicable rules are identified, a passport operator should not invent broader access or reuse rights.

Use the Regulation's own split as the data-model boundary. Article 77 says the passport contains information relating to the battery model and information specific to the individual battery, including information resulting from use. Annex XIII then assigns access categories to those groups.

Model data should describe the battery model and its regulated characteristics. Individual-battery data should follow the specific unit through status changes, use-derived measurements, state-of-health information, and events. When a battery is prepared for re-use, repurposed, remanufactured, or placed back on the market after such activity, Article 77 requires a new passport linked to the original passport or passports.

Responsibility changes at the waste stage. When the battery becomes waste, responsibility for the passport transfers to the producer, its appointed producer responsibility organisation, or the selected waste management operator, depending on the Article 77 route. The passport ceases to exist after the battery has been recycled; the system should preserve any separate records required by waste, conformity, or traceability law rather than treating passport closure as permission to erase them.

Article 77 requires the battery passport to be accessible through the QR code referred to in Article 13(6). That QR code links to a unique identifier attributed by the economic operator placing the battery on the market. The Regulation also points to ISO/IEC 15459 standards, or equivalents, for the QR code and unique identifier.

Article 78 adds the operating requirements. Access must be free of charge and based on the access rights in Annex XIII and the Article 77 implementing act. Passport data must use open standards, be interoperable, machine-readable, structured and searchable, and be protected by controls for authentication, integrity, security, privacy, and restricted update rights.

The shared DPP registry became operational on 20 July 2026. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778 takes effect on 6 August 2026 and sets registration, verification, identifier, API, access-management, semantic-repository, and logging rules. The detailed passport data remains in the decentralised system maintained by the responsible economic operator or its authorised service provider.