PPWR Article 45.
The EU-wide authorised representative obligation, decoded.

TL;DR

Article 45 of the PPWR creates an EU-wide statutory obligation for any producer not established in a Member State to designate, in that Member State, an authorised representative for extended producer responsibility (EPR). The obligation enters into force on 12 August 2026, the general date of application of the PPWR. It applies to packaging only (other EPR streams remain under national law), it requires a separate representative per Member State where the producer makes packaging available, and it transfers the operational EPR obligations to the representative under written mandate while preserving the producer’s underlying responsibility.

In France, where Article L. 541-10 of the Code de l’environnement has already required this since the AGEC law of 10 February 2020, Article 45 does not add a new substantive obligation — but it forecloses any argument that the French rule conflicts with EU law and removes the variability between Member States that some non-EU sellers had used as a wait-and-see argument.

Legal basis and source

The full regulation is Regulation (EU) 2025/40 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2024 on packaging and packaging waste, repealing Directive 94/62/EC. Article 45 sits under Chapter VIII (“Extended producer responsibility”) and is one of the central pillars of the regulation alongside Articles 43 (definition of the producer), 44 (registration) and 47 (EPR fees).

As a regulation (not a directive), the PPWR has direct effect: it applies in every Member State without national transposition. Member States cannot relax or delay its requirements. They can, however, layer additional national EPR streams on top — which is exactly what France does with WEEE, textile, furniture, batteries and other categories that remain under the AGEC law.

Article 45 — paraphrased text

The four operative paragraphs of Article 45, in plain English (paraphrased for clarity — refer to the Official Journal for the authoritative wording):

Paraphrase intended for operational understanding. Always refer to the Official Journal text for legal interpretation.

Paragraph 1 — Who must appoint a representative

The trigger is composed of two cumulative criteria. First, the producer must not be established in the Member State concerned. “Established” in EU law has been interpreted consistently across regulations (DSA, CPR, GPSR) as the place of the producer’s registered office or, absent that, the place of effective business operations. Second, the producer must make packaging available on the market of that Member State for the first time — meaning the first supply for distribution, consumption or use in the course of a commercial activity.

“Producer” is defined in Article 3(15) of the PPWR. For non-EU e-commerce sellers shipping cross-border to EU consumers, this is the foreign seller — there is no French importer of record breaking the chain. The seller is the producer.

Paragraph 2 — What the representative actually does

The mandate transfers the operational EPR obligations to the representative. In practice, this covers:

• Registration with the national producer register (in France: the eco-organism dossier that produces an IDU on the SYDEREP).
• Declaration of the quantities of packaging placed on the market, by material type, on the eco-organism’s annual cycle.
• Payment of the eco-contribution (the recycling fee) computed by the eco-organism on the basis of those declarations.
• Information provision to the competent authority (ADEME in France) on request, including supporting documents.

Crucially, the representative does not assume the producer’s upstream obligations (product design, labelling, recycled content targets). Those remain on the producer and cannot be delegated.

Paragraph 3 — The mandate and residual liability

Two consequences flow from paragraph 3. First, the producer remains liable for the underlying obligations even when fulfilled through the representative. This is a critical point that some compliance providers misrepresent — appointing a representative does not extinguish the producer’s responsibility, it transfers operational performance. In French doctrine, this is consistent with the civil mandate model (Code civil articles 1984 and 1998) confirmed by the Conseil d’État in the EcoDDS ruling of 10 November 2023.

Second, the mandate must be comprehensive across the producer’s packaging range. A producer cannot designate a representative for some SKUs only — the mandate covers the producer’s entire packaging output for the Member State concerned. This prevents arbitrage where a seller might appoint a representative only for the SKUs flagged by a marketplace.

Paragraph 4 — One representative per Member State

A producer selling cross-border to France, Germany and Italy needs three distinct representatives — one per Member State. Each representative is governed by the national EPR scheme of its Member State (LUCID in Germany, the new Italian packaging registry, French eco-organism schemes). There is no “one-stop shop” concept for representative designation under the PPWR, unlike VAT IOSS or product safety GPSR.

This is the most operationally costly aspect of Article 45 for cross-border sellers. We expect compliance providers to offer EU-wide bundles, but each registration remains a separate national procedure with separate fees, separate IDs, and separate declarations.

Interaction with French Article L. 541-10

France introduced the authorised representative model into national law via the AGEC law of 10 February 2020, codified at Article L. 541-10 II of the Code de l’environnement. Under the French regime, non-EU producers have been required to appoint a representative since 1 January 2022. Article 45 of the PPWR does not add a substantive new obligation in France — but it has three secondary effects:

• Pre-emption of conflict-of-laws arguments. Some non-EU sellers had argued that imposing a French representative requirement was a unilateral national measure not validated by EU law. Article 45 forecloses that argument.
• Marketplace consistency across the EU. Marketplaces serving multiple Member States will adopt one EPR verification process referencing the PPWR rather than country-specific procedures, which simplifies but also accelerates enforcement.
• Same legal architecture as DSA and GPSR. The authorised representative model now exists across DSA (Article 13), GPSR (Article 17) and PPWR (Article 45). Sellers can plan a single legal infrastructure for EU presence — typically one French entity acting as representative across multiple regulations.

Effective date and transitional provisions

• 22 January 2025 — PPWR published in the Official Journal.
• 11 February 2025 — Entry into force, 20 days after publication.
• 12 August 2026 — Date of application of most provisions, including Article 45. From this date, marketplaces in every Member State will require evidence of representative designation for non-EU sellers, mirroring the existing French regime.
• 2027 and beyond — Reusable packaging targets, recycled content thresholds, and the European packaging register phase in over the following years (see Articles 6, 7 and 38 of the PPWR).

Article 45 itself contains no transitional grace period for non-EU sellers — the obligation crystallises on 12 August 2026. Sellers already represented in France under the AGEC law need no specific action for the French market. Sellers shipping to other Member States need to appoint additional representatives there before that date.

Practical impact for non-EU sellers

For a non-EU seller already shipping packaging cross-border to multiple EU Member States, Article 45 changes the operating equation in three ways.

• Direct EU sales without local representation are no longer viable for packaging. Cross-border D2C from a non-EU warehouse, Pan-European FBA from a non-EU origin, or drop-shipping into EU consumers all trigger Article 45 once you exceed de minimis thresholds in the destination Member State.
• The compliance cost is per Member State. Plan for representative fees + eco-organism membership + eco-contribution in each market. Use our cost calculator to estimate for France.
• The enforcement layer comes via marketplaces. Amazon, Cdiscount, Otto, eBay, ManoMano and others will all check EPR registration as a precondition to listing, similar to the existing Amazon France regime. Non-compliance translates to listing deactivation rather than fines in the first instance — but the underlying fine regime in each Member State (in France: Article L. 541-9-6, up to €30,000 per SKU) remains available to administrations.

For sellers focused on France in 2026, our PPWR 2026 overview gives the broader context, and the 2026 compliance checklist consolidates the operational steps. If you want us to handle the French file — representative mandate, eco-organism filings across all relevant streams, IDU monitoring, marketplace upload — our pricing is flat (€490 setup + €249/month per stream) and the onboarding form takes three minutes.

Sources

• Regulation (EU) 2025/40 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2024 on packaging and packaging waste — Official Journal L, 22 January 2025.
• Directive 2008/98/EC (Waste Framework Directive), Article 8a (extended producer responsibility, basis of the representative concept).
• Loi n° 2020-105 of 10 February 2020 (AGEC), Article 62 — French transposition of the representative obligation.
• Code de l’environnement, Article L. 541-10 II — definition of the producer and authorised representative.
• Conseil d’État, 10 November 2023, EcoDDS ruling — civil mandate qualification of the representative under French Civil Code articles 1984 and 1998.
• Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (DSA), Article 13 — parallel authorised representative concept for online intermediaries.
• Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (GPSR), Article 17 — parallel concept for product safety.