New EU packaging rules apply from 12 August 2026.
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 became applicable on 12 August 2026 and replaced the 1994 Packaging Directive across the Union. For an exporter, the decisive question is less the material of the packaging than the role the company holds in each market.
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For three decades, European packaging rules reached companies through national transpositions of a single directive, each with its own definitions and reporting formats. Since 12 August 2026 they reach all twenty-seven member states through one text. Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste — adopted on 19 December 2024, published in the Official Journal of 22 January 2025, in force since 11 February 2025 — became applicable that day, and Directive 94/62/EC was repealed with effect from the same date.
For a company outside the Union, three things need settling: which obligations bind now, which carry later dates, and which role the company holds.
A directive became a regulation, and that is the substantive change
Article 71 states that the text is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all member states: no transposition step and, in principle, less divergence between markets. Article 4 bars member states from impeding compliant packaging and requires any additional national requirements not to conflict with the Regulation.
Scope is deliberately wide — all packaging placed on the EU market and all packaging waste, irrespective of material or origin. Eurostat put EU packaging waste at 79.7 million tonnes in 2023, or 177.8 kg per inhabitant.
Only part of the rulebook binds today; the rest carries its own dates
Treating 12 August 2026 as the day every requirement arrived leads to the wrong investment decisions. Three sets apply now.
First, substances. Article 5(4) keeps the 100 mg/kg limit for the sum of lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium, carried over from the previous regime. Article 5(5) is new: food-contact packaging may no longer be placed on the market at or above 25 ppb for any individual PFAS by targeted analysis, 250 ppb for the sum of targeted PFAS, or 50 ppm for PFAS including polymeric substances.
Second, conformity. The manufacturer must run the assessment procedure of Article 38, draw up the technical documentation of Annex VII and issue the EU declaration of conformity of Article 39.
Third, recyclability in its general form. Article 6(1) requires all packaging placed on the market to be recyclable, and the Commission guidance of 10 June 2026 confirms that this applies from 12 August 2026. The harmonised design-for-recycling criteria come later, in a delegated act due by 1 January 2028; until then manufacturers are assessed against the standards inherited from the Directive, and no conformity assessment for recyclability is due.
Everything else is dated — and several of those dates are the stated year or a fixed period after a Commission act still to come, whichever is later:
- 12 February 2027 — member states must have laid down penalties for infringements (Article 68).
- 12 August 2028 — harmonised material-composition labelling based on pictograms (Article 12).
- 1 January 2029 — deposit and return systems, with 90% separate collection of single-use plastic beverage bottles and metal beverage containers up to three litres (Article 50).
- 1 January 2030 — recycled content in plastic packaging of 30% for contact-sensitive PET, 10% for other contact-sensitive plastics, 30% for single-use beverage bottles and 35% for the rest (Article 7); bans on the formats listed in Annex V (Article 25); a 50% maximum empty-space ratio for grouped, transport and e-commerce packaging (Article 24); at least 40% reusable transport packaging (Article 29).
Member states must also cut packaging waste per capita by 5% by 2030, 10% by 2035 and 15% by 2040 against 2018 (Article 43).
The Regulation separates two roles, and one company often holds both
The most common source of error is a definition, not a threshold. The Commission Notice of 10 June 2026 sets it out plainly. The manufacturer, under Article 3(1)(13), is not necessarily the firm that physically makes the packaging: it is whoever has the packaging or the packaged product designed or manufactured under its own name or trademark. For sales and grouped packaging, the Commission reads this as normally the filler, often the brand owner — one manufacturer per supply chain, carrying the Articles 5 to 12 conformity duties.
The producer, under Article 3(1)(15), is a different role: the operator that makes packaging or packaged products available for the first time on the territory of a given member state. That role is national rather than European, and carries the extended producer responsibility obligations — registration under Article 44, financing of waste management under Article 45. A company can be the manufacturer once, for the Union, and the producer several times, or not at all.
For a Swiss exporter, the question is which role travels with the goods
Some 51% of Swiss exports go to the EU, according to the federal administration. The Regulation does not apply in Switzerland, but it does apply to Swiss goods placed on the EU market, and it allocates the roles above according to how the sale is structured.
Where a Swiss company sells to an EU importer or distributor, that operator is normally the producer and registers locally. The Swiss company does not thereby leave the Regulation’s reach: if the packaged product carries its name or trademark, it is the manufacturer, and Article 18(2) obliges its EU customers to verify that the conformity assessment has been done and the technical documentation drawn up. The request for an Annex VII file and an EU declaration of conformity arrives from the buyer, as a condition of continuing to buy.
Where a Swiss company sells directly to end users in a member state — the e-commerce case — it is itself the producer under Article 3(1)(15), points (c) and (d). It must be registered before making products available, and Article 45(3) requires an authorised representative for extended producer responsibility in each member state concerned; the national registers themselves follow their own implementing act (Article 44(14)). One clarification in the June 2026 guidance deserves attention: a branch has no separate legal personality and cannot qualify as an importer, so a non-EU manufacturer with only a branch in the Union must incorporate a subsidiary or appoint an authorised representative. VAT registration alone does not create establishment.
Simplification is under discussion, but it would not lift the requirement for exporters outside the Union. The Commission’s environmental omnibus proposal of 10 December 2025 would suspend Article 45(3) until 1 January 2035, while expressly allowing member states to keep requiring an authorised representative from third-country producers, or to secure traceability and enforcement by other means. It is a proposal, and changes nothing unless adopted.
Switzerland is rewriting its own packaging rules on a different clock
Swiss companies will work with two rulebooks converging in direction but not in timing. On 24 June 2026 the Federal Council adopted a package replacing the beverage-packaging ordinance of 2000 with an ordinance covering all packaging types and materials, and amending the waste ordinance (VVEA). Plastic packaging is to be materially recovered at a rate of at least 55% and beverage cartons at least 70%, and manufacturers and retailers must offer separate collection for single-use plastic packaging. The VVEA amendments took effect on 1 August 2026; the packaging ordinance is due at the start of 2027.
What can be settled now, and what to watch
Four steps are available now.
- Inventory packaging by market and by role: for each product line and member state, record who first makes the packaged product available, and therefore who is the producer.
- Obtain PFAS evidence for food-contact packaging from suppliers; the Commission’s stepwise approach treats total fluorine below 50 mg/kg as a basis for compliance.
- Keep the Annex VII documentation and the Annex VIII declaration as a living file: Article 15(4) requires re-assessment when the design or the standards change.
- Check registration and, where required, the authorised representative in each member state where the company sells directly to end users.
One point of relief, confirmed by the guidance: packaging placed on the market before 12 August 2026 may remain there and need not be withdrawn.
The next dates to move the cost base are 12 February 2027 for national penalties, 1 January 2028 for the design-for-recycling delegated act and 12 August 2028 for harmonised labelling. Packaging specified in 2027 may still be in production when the 2030 requirements apply. That is the argument for treating packaging as a regulated product now, while the specification is being written, rather than as a purchasing line to be corrected later.