Who is a producer under the EU packaging rules? The Italian text changed on 18 September
7 min read
An Italian company selling into another Member State that concluded in September it was not a producer under the packaging Regulation has left nothing behind that records the conclusion: there is no file, there is a registration that was never applied for. It is the hardest kind of decision to defend once somebody reopens it, and it was taken against a text that changed on 18 September.
The two points that changed wording
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste has applied since 12 August 2026: “It shall apply from 12 August 2026” (Article 71), except Article 67(5), deferred to 2029. Thirty-seven days later the Official Journal of the European Union corrected the Italian text alone (OJ L, 2026/90776), at the definition of producer, Article 3, point (15)(c) and (d).
At point (c), for: “il fabbricante, l’importatore o il distributore è stabilito in uno Stato membro o in un paese terzo e mette a disposizione per la prima volta all’interno del territorio di un altro Stato membro, direttamente ai consumatori, imballaggi per il trasporto, imballaggi di servizio o imballaggi per produzione primaria, sia come imballaggi monouso che come imballaggi riutilizzabili, o prodotti imballati in imballaggi diversi; oppure”, read: “il fabbricante, l’importatore o il distributore è stabilito in uno Stato membro o in un paese terzo e mette a disposizione per la prima volta all’interno del territorio di un altro Stato membro, direttamente agli utilizzatori finali, imballaggi per il trasporto, imballaggi di servizio o imballaggi per produzione primaria, sia come imballaggi monouso che come imballaggi riutilizzabili, o prodotti imballati in imballaggi diversi; oppure”. Directly to consumers became directly to end users.
At point (d) the published text was ungrammatical as well. For: “il fabbricante, l’importatore o il distributore è stabilito in uno Stato membro e mette a disposizione per la prima volta all’interno del territorio di un altro Stato membro imballaggi, direttamente degli utilizzatori dei prodotti imballati diversi da quelli di cui alla e lettera c); oppure”, read: “il fabbricante, l’importatore o il distributore è stabilito in uno Stato membro e mette a disposizione per la prima volta all’interno del territorio di un altro Stato membro imballaggi, direttamente agli utilizzatori finali, prodotti imballati in imballaggi diversi da quelli di cui alla lettera c); oppure”.
Consumers and end users are not the same audience
Article 3 defines a “consumer” as “any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside their trade, business or profession” (point 22). And an “end user” as “any natural or legal person that resides or is established in the Union to whom a product has been made available either as a consumer or as a professional end user” (point 23). The first excludes businesses, the second takes them in.
A company selling transport packaging, service packaging or primary production packaging to a business in another Member State is not selling to consumers, but to professional end users. Reading the Italian text of August it placed itself outside point (c); reading the English, French, German or Spanish text — and the Italian text of today — it is inside. This catches packaging machinery builders and their customers, suppliers of film, strapping and pallets, and anyone selling at a distance: the definition applies “irrespective of the selling technique used”.
That qualification carries duties that cannot be recovered afterwards: unregistered producers, Article 44(4) says, “shall not make available packaging or packaged products on the territory of a Member State for the first time”. That is not a penalty, it is a ban on selling. And Article 45(3) names points (c) and (d) expressly: it requires the appointment of “an authorised representative for the extended producer responsibility” in every Member State other than the one of establishment. The two defective points were the two that trigger that mandate — a question that comes before which data proves the packaging itself compliant.
Seven corrigenda, and none in English
We queried the Cellar repository for CELEX 32025R0040R(01) through 32025R0040R(10) in all 24 official languages: seven corrigenda answer, across thirteen language versions. Spanish three times; Czech, Swedish and Italian twice; French, Bulgarian, Estonian and German once. From R(08) onwards nothing answers at all. English never appears: at points (c) and (d) it has said “directly to end users” since 22 January 2025. Not a change of mind by the legislature, then: a defect in the Italian version alone.
The consolidated text confirms it: it exists in eight languages, exactly the ones that were corrected, and there is no English consolidation because there is nothing to consolidate. The Italian one, consulted today, carries a single ►C1 marker, the 2025 corrigendum: at points (c) and (d) the old wording is still there, “direttamente ai consumatori” included.
Not an isolated episode
The 18 September corrigendum is the second Italian one. The first, of 28 November 2025 (OJ L, 2025/90971), concerns Article 5(5), first subparagraph, point (c): the 50 ppm limit for PFAS and the proof owed “if total fluorine exceeds 50 mg/kg”. For whoever receives that proof the text pointed to “all’articolo 3, punti 1), 13) e 17)”; it must read “all’articolo 3, paragrafo 1, punti 13) e 17)” — three cross-references for two roles, one of them to the definition of packaging.
And the Italian point (d), even corrected, stays narrower than the others: English, French, German and Spanish all include the operator established in a third country, Italian does not — the words “o in un paese terzo” sit at point (c) alone. Which in turn keeps a tail, “o prodotti imballati in imballaggi diversi”, absent from English, French and German, and struck from the Spanish by its own corrigendum of 9 September 2025.
What we do not know
We do not give legal advice: whether a given company is a producer for a given product line is a judgement taken on its contracts. We do not know when the consolidated text will absorb the 18 September corrigendum — as of 20 September it had not — nor whether others are in the pipeline. We have not verified the Italian implementing framework, from the national register to the penalties under Article 68. A corrigendum published but not yet indexed in Cellar is one we would not have seen.
Why a closed system
Producer status is written down nowhere: it is derived by crossing the customer master data, the country of destination, the sales channel and the packaging type. These are the most confidential records a company holds, and uploading them to an outside service to be told whether you are a producer means handing your commercial map to somebody else.
Then there is the date: the decision is only worth the text in force on the day it was taken, and that calls for a dated copy of the rule inside the perimeter, not a link to a page that changes on its own. And when the rule changes the question arrives all at once: which product lines and which markets fall under the new reading. With the data in a single model that is an afternoon’s query; scattered across sales, logistics and finance it is a project of months.
The two axes, applied
Complying. The same system becomes a control running over the company’s own data: for each foreign customer, whether it is a professional end user or a consumer, for which packaging and in which Member State — and therefore the dated list of markets where registration and the appointment of an authorised representative are triggered, with the version of the text the assessment was made against attached. It is the file you produce for whoever asks why you did not register there.
Deciding. The same system holds customer master data, orders by country, bills of materials and packaging specifications in a single operating model, on which AI agents execute decisions with an operator in command — for large companies, defence, public administration and healthcare. At the next corrigendum the assessment is redone across the whole catalogue in an afternoon. Always on premises, on self-contained machines that need no deep integration into the client network, or in a dedicated cloud with a dedicated VPN and a data centre in Italy, and always co-managed.
The first session, at no cost, produces the dated list of your export markets with, for each one, which point of Article 3(15) applies to you. It stays with you even if we go no further. Talk it through with one of our engineers.