Three cases with a legal basis today — not projections.
Bottles filled after that date must declare ingredients and nutrition, and both may be provided electronically via a QR code instead of on the label. The information has to be factual, with no marketing content, and available in the official language of every member state where the wine is sold — up to 24 languages.
The revised detergents regulation introduces an optional digital label, which may carry the product formulation. The physical label keeps the safety essentials. The Commission is to adopt delegated acts on acceptable IT solutions by 1 October 2028, so what is built now shapes the practice.
The PPWR explicitly allows much of the mandated packaging information to sit behind a digital data carrier rather than crowd the artwork. From 12 February 2027, packaging in an EPR scheme must carry a digital EPR identifier anyway.
Outside wine, detergents and packaging a digital label is optional — and that is precisely when it costs least. You add the code during a redesign you were doing anyway, instead of squeezing it in when a regulation sets the date for you.
The information behind it — ingredients, materials, care, sorting, documents — is collected gradually, product by product, at the pace your suppliers can actually answer. Leaving that to the last six months before an obligation is how it turns into a project.
A wine e-label legally needs the information in the language of each market it is sold in. Our viewer renders 28 languages from a single QR — no per-market label variant, no translation round for every artwork change.
Ingredients, allergens, sorting guidance or contact details change after the run has printed. The code stays the same; what it opens is updated, and every version is archived.
When your sector's delegated act lands, the same record becomes a Digital Product Passport. Same identifier, same QR, same printed artwork — you extend rather than start over.
A digital label needs none of the EU DPP Registry machinery: no enrolment, no qualified electronic seal, no verification. You can be live this week.
Nothing here replaces mandatory on-pack marking. Safety information, hazard statements and the marks a regulation requires in print stay in print — the QR takes what is allowed to move.
Versioning, documents, role-based access and the audit log work the same whether the record is a light label or a fully regulated passport.
Scope and obligation. A Digital Product Passport is defined by law for a given product group, with mandated content and, under the ESPR, registration in the EU DPP Registry. A digital label is the electronic delivery of label information that a sector regulation already permits — no Registry, no qualified seal, no delegated act to wait for. Technically it is the same QR and the same record.
Both, depending on the sector. For wine it is the recognised way to deliver ingredients and nutrition since 8 December 2023. For detergents, Regulation (EU) 2026/405 establishes an optional digital label. For packaging, the PPWR allows information to move to a data carrier. Elsewhere it is voluntary — useful, but do not let anyone sell it to you as a legal obligation.
No, and anyone promising that is wrong. Safety information, hazard statements and the marks a regulation requires in print stay printed. What moves is the information the regulation permits to move — which for wine and packaging is a substantial share, and for detergents may include the formulation.
The information behind the code must be available in the official language of every member state where the wine is sold. If you sell across the EU, that is up to 24. Our viewer renders 28 from one QR, which is the reason most wine producers end up here.
The record you already have becomes the passport. The identifier does not change, the QR does not change, and the artwork already in print keeps working. That is the whole argument for starting with a light label rather than waiting.
No Registry, no seal, no delegated act to wait for. Live this week, and it becomes your passport later.