Which critical raw materials must I report in the passport?

What you must concretely do

What is expected of you

The ESPR identifies critical raw materials as one of the categories of information that can be included in a digital product passport, such as presence, location in the product and possibly the content. Article 10 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) describes which types of product information must be accessible via the passport, and critical raw materials fall under that. Which substances precisely qualify as "critical" for a particular product group, and at what threshold or accuracy they must be reported, is not stated in the regulation itself but is worked out per product group in a delegated act. For electronics and ICT equipment, that elaboration does not yet exist; it will be published at a later date according to the Commission's work plan.

Determine which critical raw materials are in the product

For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this means in practice that it is already possible to look at which parts of a device contain critical raw materials — think of magnets, batteries, printed circuit boards or certain alloys. That information is often not held by the company's own production, but by component suppliers. Mapping this is a preparatory process that is separate from the ultimate obligation, but is necessary in order to comply with it later.

Receive data from the supply chain

Article 38 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) describes that actors in the supply chain must make relevant product information available to the party responsible for the passport. For an importer or manufacturer of end equipment, this means that its own suppliers can be asked to indicate whether, and in which parts, critical raw materials occur. Without that input from the chain, compiling this part of the passport cannot be done properly, because an end manufacturer itself usually does not know what exactly is in a purchased part.

Keep this data available for the passport

Once the delegated act for electronics is in place, it will be established which data on critical raw materials must actually be included in the passport. Until then, it is mainly a matter of keeping the data that is already known — via suppliers, material certificates or own product specifications — in a findable place. What data goes into the product passport for electronics? gives an overview of the broader set of data in which this component fits.

Where things go wrong in practice

A few situations recur more frequently in practice with companies preparing for this.

The information is not held by the end manufacturer, and nobody has explicitly asked for it. An assembly company of, for example, consumer electronics purchases printed circuit boards and magnets from various suppliers, without the content of critical raw materials ever having been asked for — simply because it was not necessary until now.

Suppliers outside the EU do not respond or respond incompletely. Especially with components sourced from outside the Union, the willingness to share material data varies, and there is no standardized format yet for providing that data.

Companies wait until the delegated act is in place, and only then start asking the supply chain questions. Because collecting this type of data takes time — suppliers themselves also have to figure out what is in their parts — delays arise as soon as an obligation is in place.

Data on critical raw materials are confused with data already maintained under RoHS. RoHS concerns hazardous substances such as lead and cadmium, not critical raw materials such as rare earth metals or cobalt; they are two different lists with a different purpose. How does RoHS relate to the digital product passport? goes into more detail here.

Data are collected without it being clear who may access them. Material composition can be sensitive to your own competitive position, and not every company has previously considered who will have access to this specific part of the passport.

What you can document

• An overview per component or part of the device, with the question of whether critical raw materials are processed in it — even if the answer is currently "unknown".
• Correspondence with suppliers in which material data is requested, so that a file is created of what has already been requested and what is still missing.
• Certificates or material declarations that suppliers already provide, even if these are currently drawn up for another purpose (such as RoHS compliance).
• An internal point of contact or process for maintaining this data, including who is responsible for updating it — this aligns with the question How often must I update the data in the product passport?
• A preliminary assessment of which data could be commercially sensitive, so that this point does not come up only at the moment when the passport is actually published; see also Do I have to make business-sensitive data about my electronics public?

As soon as the delegated act for electronics and ICT is published, this will be supplemented with which critical raw materials must be specifically reported and at what level of detail.