Two lists, two duties: which products the destruction ban reaches and which only have to be disclosed

Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 puts two separate obligations on a large fashion brand, and each one has its own product scope.

Article 25 prohibits the destruction of unsold consumer products listed in Annex VII. That list is short and it is written in customs codes. Article 24 requires annual disclosure of unsold consumer products discarded, and it is not limited to Annex VII at all. It attaches to unsold consumer products generally.

Holding those two scopes apart resolves a large share of the confusion around this regime. A product line can fall outside the destruction ban and still sit inside the disclosure duty.

What ESPR Annex VII actually lists

Annex VII is headed “Consumer products of which the destruction by economic operators is prohibited”. It opens by fixing its own vocabulary:

The commodity codes and descriptions are taken from the combined nomenclature as referred to in Article 1(2) of Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 and as set out in Annex I thereto, in the version in force on 28 June 2024.

The list then runs in two groups.

Apparel and clothing accessories covers CN 4203, articles of apparel and clothing accessories of leather or composition leather; CN 61, articles of apparel and clothing accessories that are knitted or crocheted; CN 62, articles of apparel and clothing accessories that are not knitted or crocheted; and CN 6504 and 6505, hats and other headgear.

Footwear covers CN 6401 to 6405.

That is the entire list. CN 61 and CN 62 between them take in the great majority of a clothing brand’s range, so for a business selling garments the ban bites broadly.

What sits outside the ban

Several categories a fashion business would describe as its own product sit outside Annex VII.

CN 4202 covers trunks, suitcases, briefcases, rucksacks, handbags, wallets and purses. It is absent from Annex VII. CN 63 covers made-up textile articles, which is where home textiles sit. CN 50 to 60 cover fabric and yarn. Jewellery and watches appear on neither list.

Handbags are the clean illustration. CN 4202 is outside Annex VII, so the destruction prohibition at Article 25 does not reach an unsold handbag. CN 4202 does appear in Annex II to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 as a four-digit disclosure category. A brand may therefore still lawfully destroy an unsold handbag, and must still disclose that it did, in the same annual publication as its apparel.

The two instruments were drafted to do different jobs, and the edges are where that shows.

Why Article 24 runs wider

The wording of Article 24(1) carries no reference to Annex VII:

Economic operators that discard unsold consumer products directly or have unsold consumer products discarded on their behalf shall disclose:

What follows is four points: the number and weight discarded per year, differentiated per type or category of products; the reasons for discarding, and where applicable the derogation relied on; the proportion delivered to each of preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery including energy recovery, and disposal; and the measures taken and planned to prevent the destruction of unsold consumer products.

The verb in Article 24 is “discard”. The verb in Article 25 is “destroy”. They are not the same word doing the same work. Point (c) of Article 24 expressly contemplates discarded products going to preparing for reuse, which is carved out of the definition of destruction at Article 2(34). So a product can sit inside the disclosure duty without sitting inside the prohibition.

The disclosure is aggregate, differentiated by type or category of products. There is no item-level obligation anywhere in Article 24 or Article 25, and a readiness checklist that instructs unit-level disposition capture as an ESPR requirement is describing something the Regulation does not ask a brand to publish. A per-garment record can still be the right operational choice. Part 3 covers the evidence reasons, and that is a different question from what goes into the disclosure.

The size classes carry across both duties in identical terms, because Article 24 carries its own carve-out in the same words as Article 25(1). Micro and small enterprises are outside each duty, and medium-sized enterprises are not caught by either until 19 July 2030.

The commencement dates do not carry across. Article 25(1) opens with one, 19 July 2026, and Article 24 has no equivalent sentence anywhere, so that date belongs to the prohibition alone.

Part 1 of this series covers how the size test is run where a brand sits inside a group. A brand that is large only because a group’s numbers are added to its own under the linked-enterprise rule is inside both duties now.

How the categories are drawn for reporting

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 sets the disclosure format, and its Article 7 provides that it applies from 2 March 2027. Its Article 3 draws the reporting categories by customs code: the first two digits of the CN code, and the first four digits for the products listed in its Annex II.

Two digits is a coarse grid. CN 61 in a single line takes in every knitted garment a brand sells, from a jersey T-shirt to a cashmere coat. Four digits, for the Annex II products, produces the finer split that puts CN 4202 on its own footing.

Between now and 2 March 2027 there is no prescribed format at all, which part 4 of this series covers. What the 2027 template does settle in advance is the shape of the data a brand should be collecting from FY2026 onwards: legal entity and identifier, whether the disclosure is standalone or consolidated and which subsidiaries it covers, financial year dates, category by CN code, units, total weight in kilograms, whether packaging is included in that weight, the reason for discarding, and the split of waste treatment across preparing for reuse, destruction and unknown.

The horizon is worth stating precisely, because it is not imminent. The formatted regime applies to products discarded in the first full financial year after 2 March 2027, which for a calendar-year filer is FY2028, disclosed during 2029. There is time to build this properly.

The retrospective version is where the time pressure sits. A brand capturing weight by internal product hierarchy in the meantime is storing up a mapping exercise, and the mapping is harder on a returned garment than on an inbound shipment.

Reading Annex VII against your own customs data

This is the practical trap in Annex VII, and it catches businesses that read the list in English rather than in codes.

A brand’s own taxonomy runs on merchandising categories: outerwear, knitwear, accessories, footwear, leather goods. The combined nomenclature runs on material, construction and function, and the two do not map onto each other cleanly. Whether an item is knitted or crocheted decides between CN 61 and CN 62. Whether a bag is an article of apparel or an article of CN 4202 decides whether the destruction ban reaches it. A leather belt and a leather handbag do not land in the same chapter.

The codes are already in the business. They sit on import declarations, on commercial invoices and in the customs data a brand’s freight forwarder or customs broker holds. That data is the starting point for the scope question, and it is more reliable than a merchandising hierarchy for this purpose.

It is a starting point rather than a solution, and it is worth being straight about the gap. Customs data is held per shipment, not per SKU and not per unit. A garment coming back through a returns line carries no customs record of its own. Getting a code onto it means mapping the code from the inbound shipment or the product master onto the SKU, once, and then carrying it through to the point of disposition. That is a data exercise in the product master and the warehouse system rather than a compliance exercise, and nobody else is going to do it for a brand.

One further detail on the version. Annex VII pins the nomenclature to the version in force on 28 June 2024. The combined nomenclature is updated annually, so a code that has been renumbered since then is read against the 2024 text.

The list is not fixed

Article 25(3) empowers the Commission to amend Annex VII by delegated act, both to add products and to realign the commodity codes where the nomenclature changes.

The Commission has said what it intends to do with that power in the near term. Its Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2025 to 2030, COM(2025) 187 final of 16 April 2025, addresses the point directly at section 4.2 and records that it does not intend to expand the Annex VII list within this working plan, on the basis that doing so would be premature while the insights from the Article 24 disclosure duty are not yet available.

That is useful forward visibility, and it also describes the mechanism the Commission expects to use. Disclosure produces data, and data informs any later decision about scope. Handbags and luggage under CN 4202 are already a named four-digit reporting category under the implementing regulation, so figures for that category would exist in time. Whether they lead anywhere is not something anyone can say now, and we are not going to guess at it.

A brand whose categories sit outside the ban today should hold that as the current position rather than a settled one. The power exists, the Commission has said it will not use it yet, and neither of those is a commitment about the next working plan.

What this means for a brand selling across the boundary

A business selling apparel, footwear and leather goods is running two regimes at once against a single warehouse.

For the apparel and footwear, destruction is prohibited unless one of the ten grounds in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 applies and the evidence file behind it can be produced, which part 3 of this series covers. For the handbags on the next rack, destruction remains available, and the disposal decision is a commercial one rather than a regulated one.

Both streams land in the same annual disclosure, and each needs its reason recorded and its treatment route recorded. Running one process for the whole warehouse is the simpler operational answer, and it also removes the risk of a mis-scoped garment being sent down the handbag route by mistake. A brand that decides to treat everything as if it were in Annex VII is making a defensible call, provided the disclosure still reports the categories accurately.

Article 25(2) is worth reading alongside this. Operators that are not themselves subject to the prohibition must not destroy unsold consumer products supplied to them with the purpose of circumventing it, and that purpose is the operative condition. Part 1 of this series works through what it does and does not reach.

Recovery across a mixed range

Once a garment is inside Annex VII, the exits are to sell it, to send it for preparing for reuse, to donate it, to continue holding it, or to destroy it on a documented ground. Continuing to hold stock is lawful and the Regulation sets no deadline by which a warehouse has to be cleared.

Preparing for reuse is defined at Article 3(16) of Directive 2008/98/EC as “checking, cleaning or repairing recovery operations, by which products or components of products that have become waste are prepared so that they can be re-used without any other pre-processing”. Discarding for the sole purpose of delivering a product for that treatment is carved out of the definition of destruction at Article 2(34). It applies the same way to a garment inside Annex VII and to a bag outside it, which is useful for a business that would rather run one process across a mixed range than sort its warehouse by customs chapter first.

Opera Garment Solutions is a single point of access to a network of professional garment care experts. The order of the work is cleaning and conditioning first, repair second, and it is the same order whether the item is a coat inside CN 62 or a bag outside the list entirely. What the brand gets back per item is a condition assessment and a classification, recorded against whichever chapter the item falls under.

Questions brands ask about product scope

Which products does the EU destruction ban cover?

Annex VII to Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 lists them by customs code: CN 4203 leather apparel and clothing accessories, CN 61 knitted or crocheted apparel and clothing accessories, CN 62 apparel and clothing accessories that are not knitted or crocheted, CN 6504 and 6505 hats and headgear, and CN 6401 to 6405 footwear. The codes are read in the version of the combined nomenclature in force on 28 June 2024.

Are handbags covered by the EU destruction ban?

No. Handbags, luggage, wallets and purses sit under CN 4202, which is absent from Annex VII, so Article 25 does not prohibit destroying an unsold handbag. CN 4202 is a named four-digit reporting category under Annex II to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2, so a destroyed handbag still has to appear in the annual disclosure.

Are home textiles and fabric covered by the EU destruction ban?

Made-up textile articles under CN 63, which is where home textiles sit, and fabric and yarn under CN 50 to 60 are outside Annex VII. They remain within the scope of the Article 24 disclosure duty, which is not limited to Annex VII.

Does the disclosure duty only cover the products in Annex VII?

No. Article 24 attaches to unsold consumer products generally and carries no reference to Annex VII. Only the Article 25 prohibition is limited to that list.

Does a brand have to report unsold stock item by item?

No. Article 24 asks for the number and weight discarded per year, differentiated per type or category of products. There is no item-level obligation anywhere in Article 24 or Article 25. From 2 March 2027, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 draws those categories by the first two digits of the CN code, and by the first four digits for the products in its Annex II.

Can the Commission add products to the banned list?

Yes. Article 25(3) allows the Commission to amend Annex VII by delegated act, to add products and to realign commodity codes. No such amendment has been adopted. The Commission’s Working Plan 2025 to 2030, COM(2025) 187 final, records at section 4.2 that it does not intend to expand the list within that working plan, because doing so would be premature before the Article 24 disclosure data is available. A category outside the list today should be treated as currently outside rather than permanently outside.

References

• European Union. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products. Official Journal L series 2024/1781, 28 June 2024. Articles 2, 24 and 25, 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 and 7, and Annexes I and II.
• European Commission. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 on derogations from the prohibition of destruction of unsold consumer products. Adopted 9 February 2026, published in the Official Journal 22 April 2026.
• European Union. Directive 2008/98/EC on waste. Article 3, definitions.
• European Commission. Ecodesign for Sustainable Products and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2025-2030, COM(2025) 187 final, Brussels, 16 April 2025. Section 4.2, preventing the destruction of unsold goods.
• Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 on the tariff and statistical nomenclature and on the Common Customs Tariff, Article 1(2) and Annex I, the combined nomenclature.

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