Two regimes ask "who is responsible" and answer it differently. Getting them mixed up is the most expensive mistake on this site, because it usually means nobody registered.
The PPWR puts product-compliance duties on the manufacturer. National extended producer responsibility schemes put registration, reporting and fee duties on the producer. Same pallet of goods, potentially two different companies, and neither is decided by where the goods are stored.
| PPWR manufacturer | EPR producer | |
|---|---|---|
| Defined at | Art. 3(1)(13) | Art. 3(1)(15), then each member state's scheme |
| Test | Whoever has the packaging designed or manufactured under its own name or trademark | Whoever first makes the packaged goods available on that country's market |
| Owes | Conformity assessment (Art. 38), EU declaration of conformity (Art. 39), Annex VII technical documentation | Registration and reporting (Art. 44), EPR fees under the national scheme |
| Scope | One duty for the EU as a whole | Repeats country by country, 27 times over |
A distribution center in a member state does not by itself create or transfer an obligation. What settles it is which legal entity imports and makes the first sale in that country. One product, one warehouse, three different outcomes:
Brands routinely assume their distributor is handling registration when the distributor never took ownership of the goods. In that case nobody registered, and the liability sits with the brand.
Under Art. 21, an importer or distributor that places packaging on the market under its own name or trademark, or modifies packaging in a way that affects compliance, is treated as the manufacturer and inherits the Art. 15 duties, including the declaration of conformity. If you supply white label, this splits your portfolio in two: the lines you sell under your own brand and the lines your customer brands are not the same compliance problem, and they may not even have the same obligated party.
One exception runs the other way, and it is easy to miss because Art. 3(1)(13)(a) opens with the words "subject to point (b)". Where the brand owner is a micro-enterprise under Recommendation 2003/361/EC as applicable on 11 February 2025 and its packaging supplier sits in the same member state, point (b) makes the supplier the manufacturer, not the brand owner. Both conditions have to hold together. So private label does not automatically land on the retailer: a micro-enterprise brand owner buying locally pushes the duty back up to its supplier, while the same micro-enterprise buying across a border keeps it.
A distributor's check under Art. 19(2) is narrow. It confirms that the producer is registered under Art. 44, that the labeling meets Art. 12, and that manufacturer or importer identification is present. A distributor is not required to verify that a declaration of conformity exists.
An importer's duty is heavier. Under Art. 18(2) the importer must confirm the manufacturer carried out the conformity assessment, and under Art. 18(7) must keep a copy of the declaration of conformity for 5 years for single-use packaging and 10 years for reusable packaging.
The practical consequence: if you buy from an EU distributor rather than importing yourself, do not assume anyone upstream has checked the DoC. The distributor was never asked to.
Article 3, definitions | Article 39, declaration of conformity | Article 44, registration | Article 45, authorized representative | Country navigator