Selling into the EU from outside it? Article 45 applies to you

There is a step in PPWR compliance that cross-border sellers miss more consistently than any other, and it is not the declaration of conformity. It is the authorised representative.

The requirement

Article 45 of Regulation (EU) 2025/40 creates an EU-wide obligation: a producer not established in a Member State must designate, in that Member State, an authorised representative for extended producer responsibility.

Read that carefully, because two details do the damage.

Per Member State. Not one representative for the EU. One per country you sell into. Five markets, five appointments.

Not established in that Member State — not "not established in the EU". A company incorporated in Germany selling into France is, for French EPR purposes, a producer not established in France. The obligation is national, and it follows the market, not the border of the Union.

Why this catches sellers out

The mental model most cross-border sellers arrive with is: my importer handles compliance. For the declaration of conformity, that is often true — the importer places the goods on the market and holds the document.

Extended producer responsibility does not work that way. EPR governs who pays for the packaging at end of life: collection, sorting, recycling, and a share of the awareness measures. That cost follows the producer, and the register that tracks it is national. Article 44 requires every Member State to run a producer register, and being in that register is a precondition for placing packaging on that market.

If you sell direct to EU consumers — your own storefront, a marketplace, a fulfilment centre in the EU — there may be no importer standing between you and the market. The producer is you.

What the representative actually does

The authorised representative takes on your EPR obligations in that country: registration in the producer register, the annual declarations of packaging volumes by material, and payment of the fees. They are your legal presence for this purpose.

This is a commercial service, and it is priced per market. Budget for it as an ongoing cost, not a one-off — the reporting obligation repeats every year for as long as you sell there.

What happens if you skip it

Nothing, until it matters — and then several things at once.

Marketplaces enforce it. Large platforms increasingly require proof of EPR registration before they let you list into a given country. This is the enforcement mechanism most sellers actually meet: a listing gets suspended, not a regulator's letter.

Registration gates market access. Because registration is a precondition under Article 44, packaging placed on the market without it was never lawfully placed on the market.

Penalties are national. PPWR is one regulation, but the sanctions for breaching it are set by each Member State. There is no single number to quote, and the range is wide.

What to do about it

1. List your markets. Not where you'd like to sell — where packaging actually arrives today, including marketplace fulfilment.
2. Establish your role in each. Are you the producer there, or is an importer? Direct-to-consumer sales usually make you the producer.
3. Appoint representatives where you are the producer, and register.
4. Handle the documents separately. The declaration of conformity and technical documentation are a different obligation with a different legal basis (Articles 38 and 39). Doing EPR does not discharge them, and doing them does not discharge EPR.

The order matters. Sellers who start with the documents and never get to step 3 have a beautiful compliance file for a market they are not registered to sell into.

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The free applicability check flags the Article 45 obligation alongside the document requirements for your packaging, with the source article behind each one. It is not legal advice — for the appointment itself you'll be contracting with a service provider in each market.