No national packaging law yet, and the declaration of conformity already applies

An EU regulation does not wait for national parliaments

PPWR is a regulation, not a directive, and the difference has concrete consequences for you. A directive has to be transposed into national law before it takes effect. A regulation is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in every member state, with no step in between (Article 71).

The Regulation entered into force on 11 February 2025, and started to apply on 12 August 2026 (Article 71, second paragraph). From that day, the rules on the manufacturer, the conformity assessment procedure, the declaration and technical documentation, the obligations of importers and distributors, and market surveillance all apply. None of that needs a national law first.

Why some countries are still finishing their own legislation

PPWR still leaves a few things for member states to settle themselves, mainly who enforces it nationally and what penalties apply for breaches. Several countries are still working through the domestic process needed to settle those points, and the details and timeline vary by country.

Poland is a useful, well-documented example. Its draft Packaging and Packaging Waste Act carries the number UC100 and was meant to take effect alongside PPWR, on 12 August 2026. That date passed without the act being adopted. As of late September 2026, the draft is still going through internal government coordination and has not yet reached parliament. Polish ministries have also disagreed over which authority should supervise the market for PPWR.

If you sell into a country where the implementing legislation is still pending, do not assume the obligations below are on hold. They are not.

What a missing national law does not excuse

This is the part most businesses get wrong. The obligations below come directly from the Regulation and have applied since 12 August 2026, regardless of where any national law stands.

• Working out whether you are the manufacturer of the packaging as PPWR defines it (Article 3).
• Carrying out a conformity assessment and preparing technical documentation before placing packaging on the market (Article 15(2)).
• Signing an EU declaration of conformity using the template in Annex VIII (Article 39).
• Showing the documentation and declaration to an authority on request, within 10 days (Article 15(10)).
• Keeping the documentation and declaration for 5 years, or 10 years for reusable packaging (Article 15(3)).
• The heavy metal and PFAS limits for food-contact packaging, which have applied directly since 12 August 2026 (Article 5(4) and (5)).

What genuinely depends on national law

There are three things the Regulation leaves for national law to settle.

• Which authority supervises the market for PPWR in a given country. Where that is still unsettled, there may be no single body systematically checking PPWR declarations and documentation yet.
• What national penalties apply for a missing declaration or missing documentation. The Regulation sets a deadline for this rather than the rule itself: 12 February 2027 (Article 68(1) and (3)). Until that date, the absence of national fines for PPWR is the Regulation working as intended, not a loophole.
• What happens to any older national packaging law that predates PPWR, including existing national EPR registers and product fees. Where a new act is meant to repeal an old one, the old one typically still applies in the meantime.

What this means in practice

No national fines does not mean no consequences. Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance covers PPWR and gives authorities the power to demand documents, order packaging withdrawn from the market, or ban it from being made available, before any fine is even on the table. That is a corrective route, not a punitive one, but for a business it means the same thing: disruption and cost.

At the border this already applies without any national law. Customs authorities can hold goods coming from outside the EU if the required documentation is missing. That risk applies directly to businesses importing finished products or packaging from outside the Union.

Selling across borders carries its own risk. The declaration of conformity has to be in the language required by the country where the packaging is sold, and that country may already have a designated market surveillance authority and its own enforcement in place, even while others are still catching up.

A country's older packaging law, where one still applies, keeps working on its own track: breaching it, for example a missing EPR registration or an incorrect product fee, is a separate matter from a PPWR breach, even though the two are easy to confuse.

What to do now

Waiting for national legislation gets you nothing, because the duty to have a declaration and documentation does not depend on it. The only approach that holds up is to prepare the documentation as if an inspection could arrive tomorrow, because in practice it already can.

Start by working out whether you are the manufacturer under PPWR. Then put together documentation and a declaration that match Annexes VII and VIII. Keep an eye on your country's implementing legislation too, since it will change who enforces the rules and what the penalties are, but it will not change the fact that the documentation needs to be ready now.