Textile compliance in the EU is not one law. It is a stack of eleven rules that arrive on different dates, reach different sizes of company and ask for overlapping pieces of the same product data. Most lists you will find are organised by regulation name, which is how a lawyer thinks. This one is organised the way a brand meets the rules: in the order they bite, with what each one asks and the data that answers it.
How to use this checklist
Each item carries a status. In force means the rule applies today. Upcoming means it is adopted law with a date. Voluntary means an official method nobody is obliged to use yet. Every date is taken from the official text and was verified in October 2026; the compliance hub holds one guide per rule with the sources.
Read it from the top. The first items apply to every garment you already sell. The passport, the rule most vendors lead with, sits at number eight because that is where it falls in time.
1. The textile label and fibre names
In force since May 2012. Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 is the oldest rule on the list and the one most often broken. Every garment sold in the EU carries its fibre composition in the official EU fibre names, by percentage, in the language of the country of sale. Trade names do not count, tolerances are narrow, and the label is physical: the Commission is revising the regulation with digital labelling among the options, but until a revision is adopted the sewn-in label stays mandatory.
What it asks: the composition of every textile component, in the right names. The data: fibre composition by weight, per component, which is also the first thing items 3, 7 and 8 ask for. Guide: fibre names and the textile label.
2. Substances of concern under REACH
In force; SCIP notification since January 2021. Under Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH), a garment containing a candidate-list substance above 0.1 percent by weight already triggers duties: the supplier tells the buyer, the brand tells the customer on request, and the article is notified to the SCIP database. ESPR widens the idea to substances of concern, a larger set that includes anything hindering reuse or recycling, and the passport is the proposed place to disclose them.
What it asks: supplier declarations you can produce, and a notification where a listed substance is present. The data: a substance declaration per material, kept with the material rather than in an inbox. Guide: substances of concern in garments.
3. Textile producer responsibility and registration
Adopted law with a clock on it. Directive (EU) 2025/1892 entered into force in October 2025 and makes textile EPR mandatory in every Member State: transposition by June 2027, national schemes operational by April 2028, micro-enterprises by April 2029. Separate textile collection has applied since January 2025. The Netherlands has run its own scheme since July 2023, and its first substantive report was due in July 2026; France has had one for years; Denmark is drafting.
What it asks: textile registration with the national scheme of every country where you place garments on the market, then a periodic report of what you sold by weight and composition, then a fee resting on that weight and modulated on ecodesign criteria such as durability and recyclability. Selling online into a country counts. The data: garment weight, fibre composition by weight, packaging weights and units per market. Guide: textile producer responsibility in the EU; the Danish case is in Textile EPR in Denmark; the mechanics of a filing are in file an EPR declaration.
4. Packaging
In force since August 2026. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU) 2025/40 treats polybags, hangtags, tissue, cartons and shipping boxes as packaging, which they are. Harmonised labels follow from August 2028; the recyclability grades, recycled-content minimums and the cap on empty space arrive from 2030. The national packaging fees that preceded the regulation still apply in the meantime.
What it asks: to know what packaging ships with each garment and to register and report it where the national scheme asks. The data: packaging components with their material and weight, per style. Guide: packaging rules for fashion.
5. Environmental claims
In force since September 2026. Directive (EU) 2024/825 added four practices to the blacklist of unfair commercial practices: generic environmental claims without proof, claims about a whole product that hold for one part of it, offset-based neutrality claims, and sustainability labels that are not backed by a certification scheme or a public authority. It applies to the hangtag, the product page and the campaign alike.
What it asks: to read every claim you print against the list and to be able to point at the evidence behind the ones that remain. The data: the certificate, test result or composition fact each specific claim rests on, attached to the product it describes. Guide: environmental claims on garments and in marketing.
6. The destruction ban
In force for large companies since July 2026. Under ESPR Article 25, large enterprises may no longer destroy unsold apparel, footwear and accessories, and must disclose what they discard. Medium enterprises follow from July 2030; small and micro enterprises are exempt. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 sets out the derogations.
What it asks: a record of unsold stock and what happened to it, and a disclosure for those in scope. The data: a count per style and size at the end of the season and the route each unit took. Guide: the ban on destroying unsold clothing.
7. The environmental footprint
Voluntary, with a French exception worth knowing. The EU method for scoring a garment, the PEFCR for apparel and footwear, was approved in June 2025 and remains voluntary. France displays an environmental cost per garment since October 2025, also voluntary, and since October 2026, under the decree as published, a third party may publish a garment's cost without the brand's consent. A footprint class is proposed as a passport field once the delegated act lands.
What it asks: nothing mandatory today. What it rewards: calculating your own number before someone else does, if you sell in France. The data: composition by weight, origin and the trims, which are the inputs of both methods. Guide: the environmental footprint of a garment.
8. The Digital Product Passport
Upcoming. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, has been in force since July 2024 as the framework. The first working plan of April 2025 put textiles in line; the Commission's researchers published their study of the passport content in May 2026; the first European standards for passports followed the same month; the EU registry and its test environment opened in July 2026. The textile delegated act, which fixes the fields, the products and the date, is expected in 2027 and applies 18 months after it enters into force, so compliance is realistically from 2028 to 2029.
What it asks: a persistent identifier per product carried by a QR code, and a record of composition, origin, substances, care, repair and end-of-life guidance behind it. The data: everything on this list, held once. Guide: the Digital Product Passport for textiles; the fields as they stand are on the passport explainer; the identifier question is answered in GS1 Digital Link for fashion brands and the two proposed scores in two scores EU researchers want on every garment passport.
9. The forced labour ban
Upcoming, December 2027. Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 has been in force since December 2024 and applies from December 2027: any product made with forced labour, at any tier, may not be sold in or exported from the EU. There is no size threshold. Authorities enforce by investigation, guided by the Commission's guidelines of June 2026 and a database of risk areas and products; Member States notify their penalty rules by December 2026.
What it asks: the ability to answer an information request about the facilities behind a product. The data: supply chain traceability to the facility, per tier, with the country and the supplier on record. Guide: the ban on products made with forced labour.
10. Corporate reporting and due diligence
In force, for the largest companies. After the Omnibus I directive of March 2026, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive reaches companies with more than 1,000 employees and 450 million EUR in net turnover, reporting first for the financial year 2027, and the due diligence directive reaches companies with more than 5,000 employees and 1.5 billion EUR, applying from July 2029. Most independent brands are below both thresholds.
What it asks of an out-of-scope brand: answers to the data requests of in-scope buyers, which the law now caps at the voluntary SME standard. The data: the product facts those questionnaires are built on, countries, facilities and materials. Guide: corporate reporting and due diligence.
11. The voluntary SME standard
Voluntary since July 2025. The VSME standard, recommended by the Commission in July 2025, is the format a smaller company can report with, and after the delegated act of July 2026 it is the ceiling for what a larger buyer may ask of it. If a buyer's questionnaire goes beyond the standard, you may point at the cap.
What it asks: nothing, unless you choose to report. What it is good for: one answer format for every buyer. Guide: the voluntary sustainability standard for SMEs.
Still moving
Three things on this list are not settled. The textile labelling revision has no adopted text. The textile delegated act, and with it the final passport field list, is expected but not published. The national EPR reporting formats exist only in the countries with running schemes; anyone showing you a Danish template today has invented it.
None of that changes the data. Every version of every rule above asks for composition by weight, weight, origin, substances, packaging and care.
The data that answers most of the list
| Product data | Rules that ask for it |
|---|---|
| Fibre composition by weight, per component | Label (1), EPR fees (3), footprint (7), passport (8), recyclability score |
| Garment weight, from fabric weight and consumption plus trims | EPR (3), passport (8) |
| Packaging components, material and weight | Packaging (4), EPR packaging reports (3) |
| Country of origin and facilities, per tier | Passport (8), forced labour (9), buyer requests (10, 11) |
| Substance declarations per material | REACH and SCIP (2), passport (8) |
| Certificates and test results, attached to the product | Claims (5), footprint (7), passport (8) |
| Units sold per market and season | EPR (3), destruction ban (6) |
| Care instructions | Label (1), passport (8) |
If a column in this table is empty for your range, that is the gap to close first, whatever the deadline calendar says.
Do these in order this season
- Register where you sell. Check which of your markets already run a textile scheme and register, or pre-register where the scheme is still forming. Registration is the step brands discover late, usually from a buyer's questionnaire.
- Get weights and composition per component into one record. Not an estimate per style, but a weight derived from fabric weight, width and consumption, and a composition per layer. Everything else on the list is arithmetic on top of this.
- Audit your claims. Read every hangtag, product page and campaign line against item 5 and keep the evidence next to the product.
- Decide identifiers and the carrier. Your GTINs come from your GS1 member organisation and stay yours; the QR code on the garment outlives the season, so decide the domain and the granularity now.
- Run a trial. Export an EPR report from whatever you have and publish one passport for one style. The gaps will be obvious, and they take a season to close.
Where Seamdex fits
Seamdex is built around the data in the table above rather than around any one rule. A purchase order becomes one record per style; the record carries composition by weight per component, calculated garment weight, packaging, origin, substances, certificates and care; and the same record produces the passport, the GS1 Digital Link QR code and the EPR figures a national scheme asks for. When the delegated act changes a field, the field changes; the data behind it does not.
That is not a compliance claim. No one can make one before the textile delegated act exists. It is a claim about where the work sits: in the product data, which you can structure today.
Dates in this checklist were verified in October 2026 against the official texts linked from each guide. Future dates are expectations, not law. This is a description of the rules, not legal advice.
