regulations

Circularity Vehicle Passport: EP Adopts the ELV Regulation

On 18 June 2026 the European Parliament adopted the ELV / Circularity Requirements Regulation at first reading, introducing a Circularity Vehicle Passport.

6/24/2026 · 9 min read · InfoDPP

What Happened on 18 June 2026

On 18 June 2026, the European Parliament adopted, at first reading in plenary, the agreed text of the End-of-Life Vehicles / Circularity Requirements Regulation (legislative procedure 2023/0284(COD)). The Regulation introduces, among other things, a Circularity Vehicle Passport: a digital record of a vehicle’s materials, components and circularity data.

It is important to be precise about what this vote means. A first-reading position is a significant milestone, but it is not the final step. The text still needs formal adoption by the Council and then publication in the Official Journal of the European Union before it becomes binding law. As of June 2026, the Regulation is not yet in the Official Journal.

⚠️ Status framing: Treat the Circularity Vehicle Passport as agreed in substance but not yet final law. The European Parliament has adopted its first-reading text; Council adoption and OJ publication are still pending.

This Is Not ESPR

A common source of confusion is conflating every new EU passport with the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. The Circularity Vehicle Passport does not come from ESPR.

The ELV / Circularity Requirements Regulation is a separate, sector-specific regime with its own legal basis. ESPR provides a horizontal Digital Product Passport framework that is being filled in category by category through delegated acts. The vehicles file follows a different track: it is its own Regulation, with its own scope, obligations and timing.

This mirrors a pattern InfoDPP has tracked elsewhere. The detergents passport under Regulation (EU) 2026/405 is also a standalone, non-ESPR passport. The lesson is the same: DPP obligations are no longer limited to ESPR sectors, and each regime should be described on its own terms.

What the Regulation Consolidates

The new Regulation does not appear out of nowhere. It consolidates and modernises two existing EU instruments:

the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive (2000/53/EC), which governs how vehicles are treated at the end of their life
the 3R Type-Approval Directive (2005/64/EC), which addresses reusability, recyclability and recoverability at the design and type-approval stage

By merging the design-stage and end-of-life-stage rules into a single Regulation, the EU is trying to close the loop between how a vehicle is built and how it is eventually dismantled, reused and recycled. On top of that consolidation, the Regulation adds new obligations that the older Directives did not contain.

Recycled Content and Extended Producer Responsibility

Two of the most concrete additions are recycled-content targets and extended producer responsibility (EPR).

Recycled-content targets

The Regulation introduces phased targets for recycled material in new vehicles. The figures most cited in the agreed text concern recycled plastic:

15% recycled plastic after 6 years from the relevant application date
25% recycled plastic after 10 years

These percentages are the headline numbers. The exact baselines, measurement methods and any later review will be set out in the final text and in implementing measures, so they should be treated as the agreed direction of travel rather than final operational detail.

Extended producer responsibility

The Regulation also strengthens extended producer responsibility, meaning vehicle producers carry defined responsibility (including financial responsibility) for the costs of collection and treatment at end of life. EPR is a familiar mechanism in other EU waste streams, and bringing it formally into the vehicles regime is one of the structural changes in this file.

The Circularity Vehicle Passport Itself

The Circularity Vehicle Passport is the digital backbone that ties these obligations together. In broad terms, it is intended to be a structured digital record covering a vehicle’s materials, components and circularity-relevant data, so that the information needed for repair, dismantling, reuse and recycling is available across the value chain.

Because the Regulation is not yet final law, the detailed data fields, access rules and technical specifications are not yet fixed. The passport is expected to phase in around 2032, which gives the sector a multi-year runway before the digital record becomes a live obligation. That is a long lead time by DPP standards, and it is deliberate: vehicles are complex, long-lived products with deep supplier chains.

Where Vehicles Sit in the Wider DPP Landscape

Vehicles do not stand alone. The automotive value chain already intersects with two product groups that InfoDPP covers in detail:

Batteries. The EU Battery Regulation already mandates a battery passport, with key obligations arriving in February 2027. Electric-vehicle and industrial batteries are squarely in scope, so many vehicle producers will be handling a battery passport well before the vehicle passport phases in.
Tyres. Tyres are named in the first ESPR Working Plan 2025–2030 as a priority category, although for tyres the timing should still be described as an indicative working-plan window rather than a fixed deadline.

The practical takeaway is that a vehicle is, increasingly, a product made of other passported products. A car placed on the EU market in the 2030s could sit at the intersection of a vehicle passport, a battery passport and (eventually) a tyre passport. Teams that treat these as one connected data problem, rather than three disconnected compliance projects, will be in a far stronger position.

What Manufacturers, Importers and Recyclers Should Prepare Now

Nothing here is a same-week QR-code task. With the passport phasing in around 2032, the next few years are best treated as a readiness window. The most useful preparation is structural.

Vehicle manufacturers (OEMs)

Map material and component data at the level the passport is likely to need, especially plastics, where the recycled-content targets bite first.
Trace recycled content through the supply chain. The 15% / 25% plastic targets only mean something if recycled-content evidence flows reliably from suppliers.
Connect design-stage and end-of-life data. The Regulation merges the 3R type-approval logic with end-of-life obligations, so reusability, recyclability and recoverability data should not live in a silo.
Plan for EPR cost and reporting flows as part of normal product economics, not as an afterthought.

Importers

Confirm where responsibility sits. Importers placing non-EU-built vehicles on the EU market should expect to carry obligations they cannot simply pass upstream.
Secure supplier data access early. Material composition and recycled-content evidence are hardest to obtain after the fact, and importers are often furthest from that data.

Dismantlers and recyclers

Prepare to consume passport data, not just produce it. The circularity passport is meant to make dismantling and material recovery more informed.
Align treatment records with the data structures the Regulation will eventually define, so end-of-life reporting and the passport reinforce each other.

The common thread is the same across all three roles: build a clean, structured product-data layer now, while the detailed rules are still settling, rather than scrambling once they are fixed.

What Is Confirmed Versus Still Pending

To keep the status honest:

Confirmed today:

the European Parliament adopted its first-reading text on 18 June 2026 (procedure 2023/0284(COD))
the Regulation introduces a Circularity Vehicle Passport
it consolidates the ELV Directive (2000/53/EC) and the 3R Type-Approval Directive (2005/64/EC)
it adds EPR and recycled-content targets (notably the 15% / 25% recycled-plastic figures)
the passport is expected to phase in around 2032
it is a separate regime from ESPR

Still pending:

formal Council adoption
publication in the Official Journal (not yet in the OJ as of June 2026)
the detailed passport data fields, access rules and technical specifications
final baselines and measurement methods behind the recycled-content targets

Until the text is in the Official Journal, the safest framing is “agreed in substance, awaiting formal adoption.”

Official Sources

Preparing a vehicle, battery or tyre data layer before the rules are final? Start free on OriginPass.eu and test a structured DPP workflow early.

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