PPWR Declaration of Conformity: what Annex VIII actually requires

Since 12 August 2026, packaging placed on the EU market needs an EU Declaration of Conformity. Not the packaging manufacturer's declaration, not a certificate from a lab — your declaration, on your company's paper, under a signature that carries legal weight.

Most companies discover this the way compliance obligations are usually discovered: a customer asks for the document during supplier onboarding, and nobody in the building knows what they're being asked for.

What the declaration actually is

Article 39 of Regulation (EU) 2025/40 sets it out. The declaration is a written, self-certified statement that a specific packaging meets the requirements of Articles 5 to 12 — substances of concern, recyclability, recycled content, minimisation, labelling.

Two words in that sentence do most of the work.

Self-certified. There is no authority that approves your declaration in advance. You run the conformity assessment yourself (Article 38, internal production control — the module known as Module A), you draw your own conclusion, and you declare it. Nobody stamps it.

Statement. By signing, you assume legal responsibility for the packaging's conformity. That is the trade the regulation makes: no pre-approval bureaucracy, but the liability sits with whoever signs.

What goes in it

Annex VIII gives the model. In substance you are identifying four things:

1. The packaging — unambiguously enough that an inspector can match the document to the physical object in front of them.
2. The economic operator — who is declaring, and in what capacity.
3. The requirements met — which of Articles 5 to 12 apply, and the statement that they are satisfied.
4. The signature — place, date, name, function of the person signing on behalf of the company.

The structure is not a suggestion. A declaration that omits the packaging identification, or that vaguely gestures at "EU packaging requirements" instead of naming what it satisfies, is not a declaration in the Annex VIII sense.

The document behind the document

A declaration on its own is an assertion. What makes it defensible is the technical documentation under Article 38 and Annex VII — the file that shows how you reached the conclusion you declared.

This is where audits actually fail. Not because packaging is non-compliant, but because nobody assembled the evidence: the material composition per component, the recyclability assessment, the recycled-content calculation, the substance restrictions. A market surveillance authority can ask for that file, and "we're confident it complies" is not a response.

The declaration is the visible part. The technical file is the part that has to survive being read.

Who has to draw it up

The obligation follows whoever places the packaging on the EU market:

• Manufacturers established in the EU, for packaging they make.
• Importers, for packaging that arrives from outside the EU — which in practice means the importer inherits an obligation created by a supplier they may never have spoken to about it.
• Brand owners, where the packaging is placed on the market under their name.

If you are not established in the Member State concerned, Article 45 adds a separate obligation: designate an authorised representative for extended producer responsibility in each market you sell into. That is a different requirement from the declaration, and companies routinely do one and forget the other.

One declaration per what?

Not per SKU. One declaration covers a packaging unit or a family of packaging sharing the same relevant characteristics. A glass jar with a metal lid, sold in three label variants, is one packaging for this purpose. The same jar with a plastic lid is not.

The practical test: if a change would alter the answer to any of the substantive requirements — different material, different construction, different recycled content — it needs its own declaration.

How long you keep it

Keep the declaration and the technical documentation behind it available for as long as the packaging is on the market, plus the retention period your scheme requires. "Available" means you can produce it when asked, not that it exists somewhere in an email thread from two years ago.

Where people go wrong

Treating it as a form to fill. The declaration is the last step, not the first. If you write it before you have the technical file, you are declaring something you haven't checked.

Copying between products. The most common failure mode: a declaration is produced in Word for one product and cloned across the range, quietly drifting away from both the Annex VIII structure and the actual packaging.

Waiting for the supplier. Your packaging supplier's data is an input, not a substitute. The obligation is yours. If the data is missing, that gap belongs in the technical file as an open item — documented, not guessed.

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This article explains the requirement; it is not legal advice. For your own packaging, the free applicability check tells you which requirements apply, with the article behind each one.