EN 18223: system interoperability for digital product passports

EN 18223 is the European standard for system interoperability in digital product passports. It is about two systems that have never been in contact being able to exchange a passport and understand it the same way: what the passport is, which product it concerns and what each piece of data means. It concerns those who build passport systems and data models, those who develop sector data dictionaries, and anyone who has to read passports from many different publishers.

EN 18223 is one of the six harmonised standards that CEN approved on 3 May 2026, that SIS adopted as a Swedish standard on 27 May 2026, and whose references appeared in the Official Journal on 15 July 2026. This article explains what the standard covers, what it means in concrete terms and why it is the base the other standards in the series rest on. See also the overview of the DPP standards.

What the standard covers

The full reference is EN 18223:2026 Digital Product Passport – System interoperability. The Swedish edition, SS-EN 18223:2026, runs to 27 pages. According to the scope statement published by SIS, the standard covers:

• the semantic description of a product, including its properties where relevant and the semantic aspects of the product life cycle,
• a common information model that allows data dictionary systems to be implemented,
• metadata models and formats for exchange and representation, so that dictionaries can be integrated,
• rules on how to use those metadata models when developing product-group-specific data models and dictionaries,
• technical and organisational interoperability.

The standard follows the usual approach of interoperability layers. At the CEN and CENELEC webinar on 25 June 2026 its aims were described as interoperability across all product sectors, software and use cases, easy adoption into existing systems and processes, consideration of security, registry and repository, and unambiguous rules for semantics, data model and serialisation. In the webinar's picture of how the standards fit together, EN 18223 sits at the bottom as the shared terminology and core data model the others build on.

What it requires in practice

The text is sold through the national standards bodies. The details below come from the licensed SS-EN edition as we read it when building DPP Agent. Check them against your own copy.

The passport header

The most concrete part is the passport header: the attributes that describe the passport as a record rather than the product. Table 1 in clause 4.1.2.1 lists them:

Attribute	What it states
digitalProductPassportId	The passport's own id.
uniqueProductIdentifier	The product's unique identifier under EN 18219.
granularity	Whether the passport covers a model, a batch or a single item.
dppSchemaVersion	The reference standard the passport's schema follows.
dppStatus	The passport's status.
lastUpdated	When the passport last changed.
economicOperatorId	The economic operator's identifier.
facilityId	The facility's identifier. Optional.
contentSpecificationIds	Which content specifications the passport's content follows. Optional, may be several.

The split between header and content matters. The header is the same for every product group. The content, meaning what a shirt or a sofa has to declare, is set per product group and can be referenced through contentSpecificationIds. A system that can read the header can therefore tell what it is looking at, even when it does not know the product group.

Passport header · the same for every product group

digitalProductPassportIduniqueProductIdentifiergranularitydppSchemaVersiondppStatuslastUpdatedeconomicOperatorIdfacilityIdcontentSpecificationIds

Content · set per product groupwhat a shirt or a sofa has to declare

The header carries identifiers, not names. The economic operator and the facility are given as identifiers following the schemes described in EN 18219. According to the webinar, EN 18219 has five identifier schemes for products and four for economic operators and facilities.

Related resources and changes

Documents and certificates are attached to the passport as related resources (clause 4.1.2.7), with their content type, address, language and title. Changes to the passport are logged and archived under EN 18221 (clause 4.2). The standard recommends tracking each change with an identifier, a timestamp, who made it and what changed.

Data dictionaries and semantics

The other half of the standard is about meaning. Two systems can both have a field called something like "material" and still mean different things: share by percentage or by weight, the whole product or just the outer fabric. The common information model and the metadata models let each data element refer to a definition in a data dictionary. Whoever develops the data model for a product group follows the standard's rules on using the metadata models, so the result can be read with the same tools as every other product group.

A checklist

1. Does every passport have a header with the Table 1 attributes?
2. Are the economic operator and facility given as identifiers rather than free text?
3. Is granularity stated, and does it match the product identifier?
4. Does the passport say which content specification it follows?
5. Is the change history tied to the passport id?

How EN 18223 relates to the other standards and the law

ESPR Article 11(a) requires the product passport to be fully interoperable with other product passports as regards the technical, semantic and organisational aspects of end-to-end communication and data transfer. That is more or less the title of EN 18223. ESPR Annex III lists the data the delegated acts may require, among them the product's unique identifier, the unique operator identifiers of the manufacturer and other actors, and unique facility identifiers. They reappear in the header as uniqueProductIdentifier, economicOperatorId and facilityId. ESPR Article 9(2)(d) says the acts specify whether the passport is at model, batch or item level, which is what granularity expresses.

Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1736 states that EN 18223 and the other five satisfy Articles 10 and 11. Under Article 41(2) that gives a presumption of conformity to the extent the standard covers them.

Within the series the roles divide like this:

• EN 18219 sets how the identifiers in the header are formed.
• EN 18216 sets the formats and protocols the passport travels in.
• EN 18222 sets the calls that return the passport.
• EN 18221 sets how versions are archived.
• EN 18239 and EN 18246 set access and authenticity. CEN approved them on 17 August 2026 and SIS adopted them on 16 September 2026, but they are not cited in the Official Journal.

The Batteries Regulation requires in Article 78(a) that the battery passport be fully interoperable with the product passports required under ecodesign law. A battery passport and an ESPR passport should therefore be readable with the same tools, even though Decision 2026/1736 gives a presumption of conformity only under ESPR.

Common misunderstandings

"EN 18223 decides what data a textile product carries"

No. According to CEN and CENELEC the standards are transverse and product agnostic. Content is set in the delegated acts for each product group. EN 18223 provides the structure and the rules for building such data models.

"There is no attribute for a previous passport, so passports need not be linked"

Wrong conclusion. Table 1 has no attribute pointing to another passport, but the requirement exists anyway. ESPR Article 11(d) says that a new passport for a product that already has one shall be linked to the original. Batteries Regulation Article 77(7) requires the same for batteries prepared for re-use or repurposed, and EN 18219 clause 4.4.2 requires a new identifier to be linked to the old one when granularity changes. A field name missing from a standard does not mean the requirement is missing. EN 18223's own Annex ZA maps Article 11(d) to related resources (clause 4.1.2.7).

"The manufacturer's name in plain text is enough"

The header carries identifiers for the economic operator and the facility. ESPR Article 12 says unique operator and facility identifiers shall comply with the standards named in Annex III, or equivalent ones, until harmonised standards are published. A name can appear in the content, but it does not replace the identifier.

"Interoperability means one shared database"

No. Passports are stored by many economic operators and providers. Interoperability means they follow the same model and semantics, so they can be read and compared without sitting in the same place.

How this looks in practice

In DPP Agent, developed by Blippa, the system fills in the passport header for every passport. The validator at dppagent.com reports seven of the Table 1 attributes for any passport: passport id, product identifier, granularity, schema version, status, last updated and economic operator id. It reports them separately from product content, because the header describes the passport and the content describes the product. A well-formed passport with thin content and rich content in a malformed passport should not get the same score.