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Welcome to the home page of the ‘Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) - preliminary study on new product priorities’ under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)’ project, which aims to suggest a number of product groups and horizontal measures that may be suitable candidates for prioritisation under ESPR, once it enters into force.

This study examines a variety of end-use and intermediate products falling under the proposed scope of the ESPR, such as textiles, furniture, tyres, detergents, paints, iron and steel, aluminium, non-ferrous metal products and others, and assesses them based on the criteria set out in the proposal (see Article 16), including environmental, sustainability and circularity impacts, the potential for improvement from an environmental point and the extent to which regulatory gaps exist, amongst others. In addition, the study examines possible horizontal measures to address under ESPR – cross-cutting measures applicable to groups of products sharing enough technical similarities, which would enable key sustainability aspects to be addressed in a harmonised manner across a number of relevant products at a time.

The ESPR proposal (COM(2022) 142 final) was adopted by the European Commission in March 2022, accompanied by a Communication “on making sustainable products the norm” (COM(2022) 140 final). The aim of the ESPR proposal is to create a strong and coherent legislative framework for setting ecodesign requirements on products – to improve their circularity, energy performance and other environmental sustainability aspects, throughout the product life cycle. It should be noted that the ESPR proposal is still to be adopted by the co-legislators and is therefore subject to further changes.

To implement this framework, the product-specific and horizontal measures will be developed on the basis of a Working Plan, thus enabling prioritisation of the most relevant products and measures, based on the criteria set out in the proposal.

JRC Directorate B undertakes independent, neutral, science-based research in support of the study and involves stakeholder experts through a structured technical working group process.

* Communication from the Commission 2022/C 182/01