The rule that would let you register once for the whole EU instead of 27 times took its last comments on September 10, 2026. The Commission's draft implementing regulation under Article 44(14) drew
7,667 responses, one of the heaviest turnouts any packaging consultation has seen, and a fair share of them came from small sellers arguing that country-by-country registration is what keeps them out of other member states.
What changes for you today: nothing. You still register separately in every country where you count as a producer, on that country's own portal, in that country's own format. The draft was legally due on February 12, 2026, so it is already seven months late, and the eighteen months member states get to rebuild their registers to a single EU format only starts running once the act is adopted. Nobody has said when that will be.
What to do. Do not hold off on a registration you owe now in the hope this lands first; the duty is live and the relief is not. If you sell into several member states, the useful move is to get your packaging data into one structure of your own, so that when a single EU format does arrive you are reformatting one dataset rather than reconciling 27. You can read the draft act and the filed responses on the Commission's register:
Have Your Say initiative 15352. Source: European Commission, draft implementing regulation Ares(2026)7688068 and its Annex, feedback period August 6 to September 10, 2026, register read September 15, 2026.