Eight things the unsold stock rules do not settle, and the dates that are fixed

A brand working through the ESPR unsold stock rules will hit questions the instruments do not answer. What follows is the list we keep. Each item is a real gap in the law rather than a gap in our reading of it, and for each one we have said what turns on it. The eighth follows from the analysis in part 1. The dated timeline at the end is the part that is settled.

There is still no Commission guidance note, FAQ or interpretive communication on Article 24 or Article 25. We checked again on 8 September 2026 against the Commission’s own implementation pages and its July 2026 news item on the ban entering into application, and found nothing. There is no published enforcement practice either, because the prohibition has been running for under two months.

1. Whether routing saleable stock to a recovery service is a disclosable event at all

The definition of destruction turns on discarding a product as waste. Waste is defined in Article 3(1) of Directive 2008/98/EC as any substance or object which the holder discards, intends to discard, or is required to discard.

Stock consigned to a recovery service as inventory, which the owner intends to get back and sell, is arguably never waste. The holder is not discarding it and does not intend to. On that reading the destruction definition is never engaged, and neither is a disclosure line.

The Waste Framework Directive sharpens the point rather than resolving it. Point 13 defines re-use as an operation carried out on products that have not become waste. Point 16 defines preparing for re-use as an operation carried out on products that have. The two sit on either side of a line the Regulation does not draw for this situation.

What turns on it is whether a recovery route generates a reporting entry at all, which affects the shape of a brand’s disclosure and the size of its reported volumes. We are careful not to tell brands that using a recovery service creates a disclosure obligation, because the question is open in both directions.

2. How “sole purpose” gets tested

Article 2(34) exempts discarding for the sole purpose of delivering a product for preparing for reuse, including refurbishment or remanufacturing operations. One exception, with refurbishment and remanufacturing named as operations inside preparing for reuse rather than as alternatives to it.

“Sole” is doing real work in that sentence, and mixed consignments are not addressed anywhere. A pallet sent to an operator with the expectation that some items will be recovered and the remainder recycled does not obviously fall inside an exception written around a single purpose.

What turns on it is how brands consign stock. A reading that requires purpose to be sole would push towards assessment before consignment, so that the recovery stream and the disposal stream are separated before either leaves the building. No instrument says that yet.

3. What the penalties actually are

Article 74 leaves amounts and procedure to member states, requiring only that penalties be effective, proportionate and dissuasive, and that every member state be able to impose at least fines and time-limited exclusion from public procurement procedures.

Germany has published national ESPR penalties: section 19 of its Ökodesign-Gesetz (BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 191, issued 26 June 2026, in force 1 November 2026) sets fines of up to €100,000 for destroying unsold products in breach of Article 25 and up to €10,000 for Article 24 disclosure and information failures. We have not found any in the Netherlands or Spain. Other figures circulating in trade commentary appear to attach to greenwashing and misleading-communication regimes. Part 4 of this series covers the position in full.

What turns on it is the size of the number a board is being asked to weigh against the cost of a compliant process, which at present nobody can supply from a primary source.

4. What evidence satisfies an authority

Article 3 of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 lists document types per derogation ground, which part 3 of this series works through. Annex III to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 sets the principles for verification. Between them they describe what should be kept and how targets will be selected.

Neither says what quality of evidence will be accepted, and there is no enforcement practice to learn from. A brand designing an evidence file today is designing it against a written specification with no worked examples behind it.

What turns on it is how much process to build. The specification is clear enough to follow and it is not detailed enough to tell a brand when it has done enough.

5. Whether a group publishes once or once per entity

The disclosure duty binds economic operators, and a fashion group frequently contains several. The 2027 template asks whether a disclosure is standalone or consolidated, and which subsidiaries it covers, which establishes that the drafters knew the question existed.

Nothing tells a group what to do in the meantime, before that template applies. A consolidated group disclosure and a set of entity-level disclosures both look defensible on the face of Article 24, and they produce different numbers against the peer comparison in Annex III.

What turns on it is which legal entity publishes, on which website, covering which trading companies. That is a decision with a lead time, because it determines how the data has to be collected.

One observation holds either way, and it is the reason not to wait for the answer. A consolidated group figure is the sum of entity figures, so the collection has to be built entity by entity whichever route a group eventually takes. What the decision changes is what gets published and where, leaving the counting the same either way.

6. How the ESPR duty and textile producer responsibility interact

Directive (EU) 2025/1892 makes extended producer responsibility for textiles mandatory across the EU, with member state schemes required by 17 April 2028. The point 4j it inserts into Article 3 of Directive 2008/98/EC confirms that “unsold consumer product” in the Waste Framework Directive takes its meaning from ESPR Article 2(37), so the two regimes share the term.

They ask for different things. The ESPR asks what was discarded and where it went. Producer responsibility asks what was placed on the market and charges a fee against it. A brand may end up reporting overlapping data twice, under definitions that agree on the term and diverge on the return.

What turns on it is whether the reporting work can be built once and used twice, which would be worth knowing before either system is built.

7. Which returns are caught

Part of this is settled, and the definition at Article 2(37) is worth reading in full:

‘unsold consumer product’ means any consumer product that has not been sold including surplus stock, excess inventory and deadstock and products returned by a consumer on the basis of their right of withdrawal in accordance with Article 9 of Directive 2011/83/EU or, where applicable, during any longer withdrawal period provided by the trader;

One category of return is expressly inside it: a consumer return under the right of withdrawal, and under any longer withdrawal period the trader offers voluntarily. A brand running a 60-day or 100-day returns policy has widened that category by its own terms of sale. We have set out which returns the EU destruction ban covers in more detail.

What the definition does not name is everything else that comes back. Returns from a wholesale customer, stock returned by a retail partner at the end of a season, and faulty goods returned under a statutory remedy appear nowhere in it. Goods that were sold and came back sit awkwardly against a framing built around products that have not been sold.

Concession and consignment stock complicate it further, because where title never passed to the retailer the stock has not been sold at all, which on the plain wording puts it inside the ban whatever the commercial arrangement looks like.

What turns on it is how much of a brand’s return flow is regulated and how much is a purely commercial decision. For a wholesale-led business the unnamed categories account for a large part of the flow.

8. What a medium-sized enterprise publishes in 2030

Article 24 reaches medium-sized enterprises from 19 July 2030. The same article says the first disclosure covers “the first full financial year during which this Regulation is in force”, which for a calendar-year filer is 2025.

Those two sentences pull in different directions for a company that is not bound until 2030. Read literally, the anchor does not move with the size class, so a medium-sized enterprise arriving in 2030 would owe disclosures running back to FY2025. Read purposively, the duty attaches when it attaches and the first disclosure is of the first year for which the operator is bound. Nothing in the Regulation or the implementing regulation resolves it.

What turns on it is how far back a medium-sized enterprise has to be able to count, and therefore when it has to start collecting. A company that reads it the second way and turns out to be wrong cannot go back and gather data for years it did not record. This question falls out of the analysis in part 1 rather than from anything in the instruments, which is a fair indication of how little of this ground has been walked.

The dates that are fixed

19 July 2026

The destruction prohibition at Article 25 took effect for large enterprises. The Article 24 disclosure duty was already running by this date and did not commence on it.

2 March 2027

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 applies. It sets the prescribed disclosure format at Annex I, the category structure at Article 3, and the twelve-month disclosure deadline. It first applies to products discarded in the first full financial year after that date, so for a calendar-year filer the formatted regime reaches FY2028 and is disclosed during 2029.

19 July 2027

The Commission must publish consolidated information on the destruction of unsold consumer products on its website, under Article 26, and again every 36 months after that. It covers the prevalence of destruction of specific product groups per year, drawn from the Article 24 disclosures, and the comparative environmental impacts per product group. It is consolidated and by product group, so it is a category denominator and not the peer set Annex III describes. Part 4 of this series sets out what that does and does not give a brand.

2027, indicative

A delegated act setting ecodesign requirements for textiles, with a focus on apparel, is listed in the Commission’s Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2025 to 2030, COM(2025) 187 final of 16 April 2025. The adoption column for textiles and apparel reads 2027, and the working plan describes its timings as indicative. The textile Digital Product Passport is expected to be defined through that same act. A separate footwear study is due to complete by the end of 2027, and it is a preparatory study rather than the delegated act.

17 April 2028

Every member state must have an extended producer responsibility scheme in place for textile, textile-related and footwear products, under Directive (EU) 2025/1892. This is a separate regime from the ESPR with its own registration and fee obligations, and some national schemes are already running ahead of the deadline.

19 July 2030

The destruction prohibition and the disclosure duty reach medium-sized enterprises. Micro and small enterprises remain outside both, with no end date attached to that exemption.

2 March 2031

The Commission reviews Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 under its Article 6.

Not dated

Article 25(3) allows the Commission to amend Annex VII by delegated act, to add products and to realign commodity codes. Section 4.2 of the working plan records that the Commission does not intend to expand the list within this working plan, because doing so would be premature before the Article 24 disclosure data is available. That is a statement about this working plan rather than a permanent position.

Deciding while the questions are open

Part 4 of this series sets out what to do about the disclosure itself, and about knowing where stock goes once it leaves the building. Both hold whichever way these questions resolve.

The decision this list changes is when stock gets assessed. Assessing before consigning, rather than after, separates the recovery stream from the disposal stream at source, so no consignment carries a mixed purpose. That answers question 2 under either reading of “sole purpose”. It also leaves question 1 undisturbed, because stock identified as saleable is not discarded, though nothing confirms that reading and we are an interested party in it.

The stronger reason is narrower. Assessing first generates the quality assessment record the condition derogations expect under Article 3 of the delegated regulation, and that is the one thing on this page that cannot be produced retrospectively.

None of that depends on an answer nobody has yet.

Our interest in this, stated plainly

Opera Garment Solutions recovers returned and unsold garments for fashion brands and brings them back to a condition the brand can sell. We are a single point of access to a network of professional garment care experts. The bulk of what we do is cleaning and conditioning, meaning stain removal, drying, ironing and final presentation. Repair is the smaller part.

That gives us an obvious interest in a regime that treats checking, cleaning or repairing as preparing for reuse, in the definition at Article 3(16) of Directive 2008/98/EC, and this series should be read with that in mind. Preparing for reuse is one route among several. The ten derogations remain available to stock that meets them, and holding stock is lawful with no deadline attached.

The instruments are listed under every part of this series so that any of it can be checked against the source rather than against us.

Questions brands ask about what is still open

Has the Commission published guidance on ESPR Articles 24 and 25?

No. As at 8 September 2026 we have found no Commission guidance note, FAQ or interpretive communication addressing either article. The general ESPR FAQ on the Commission’s implementation pages predates the unsold stock regime, and the Commission’s news item of 17 July 2026 on the ban entering into application links only to the two secondary acts.

Does sending stock to a recovery provider have to be reported under Article 24?

The position is not settled. Article 24(1)(c) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 contemplates discarded products going to preparing for reuse, so the two are not mutually exclusive. The definition of destruction turns on discarding a product as waste, and waste under Article 3(1) of Directive 2008/98/EC is something the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard. Stock sent for recovery as inventory, which the brand intends to sell, is arguably never waste. No instrument resolves it.

Are wholesale returns covered by the destruction ban?

Article 2(37) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 defines an unsold consumer product as one that has not been sold, including surplus stock, excess inventory and deadstock, and products returned by a consumer under the right of withdrawal in Article 9 of Directive 2011/83/EU or any longer withdrawal period the trader provides. Returns from wholesale customers, retail partners and faulty goods returned under a statutory remedy are not named in the definition, and the position is open. Concession and consignment stock where title never passed to the retailer has not been sold at all, which puts it inside the prohibition on the plain wording.

Does a fashion group publish one disclosure or one per company?

Nothing settles it before 2 March 2027. From that date the template in Annex I to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 asks whether a disclosure is standalone or consolidated and which subsidiaries it covers. The duty itself binds economic operators, and a group typically contains several.

When do the rules reach medium-sized companies?

19 July 2030, for the destruction prohibition at Article 25 and the disclosure duty at Article 24. Micro and small enterprises are outside both, and no end date is attached to that exemption.

Will more products be added to the destruction ban?

Not within the current working plan. Article 25(3) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 allows the Commission to amend Annex VII by delegated act and none has been adopted. The Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2025 to 2030, COM(2025) 187 final, records at section 4.2 that expanding the list would be premature before the Article 24 disclosure data is available. Part 2 of this series covers the product scope in full.

References

• European Union. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products. Articles 2(34), 2(37), 24, 25, 26 and 74, and Annex VII.
• European Commission. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 establishing the details and format for the disclosure of information on discarded unsold consumer products. Articles 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7, and Annexes I, II and III.
• European Commission. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 on derogations from the prohibition of destruction of unsold consumer products. Articles 1, 2 and 3.
• European Union. Directive 2008/98/EC on waste. Article 3, points 1, 13 and 16.
• European Union. Directive (EU) 2025/1892 amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste. Article 1(2), inserting Article 3, points 4i and 4j, into Directive 2008/98/EC, and the 17 April 2028 scheme deadline.
• European Commission. Ecodesign for Sustainable Products and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2025-2030, COM(2025) 187 final, Brussels, 16 April 2025. Sections 2.2.1, 2.2.3 and 4.2.
• European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment. “Ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application”, 17 July 2026.

This article describes the law as we understand it at 8 September 2026. It is not legal advice.