The LIFE4EPR project has just released Deliverable 3.1, an assessment of selected national EPR producer and product registers across EU Member States. 

The publication comes at a moment when Extended Producer Responsibility is expanding in scope and scrutiny, while the Single Market reality remains uneven: rules are EU-driven, but registration systems and day-to-day compliance are still shaped by national interpretations, different operational models, and varying levels of digital maturity. For producers, especially those selling cross-border and online, this translates into duplicated processes, inconsistent data requests, and uncertainty over “who checks what,” where and how. For authorities and PROs, fragmented data and weak interoperability can limit effective verification and enforcement, leaving room for free-riding and identity-related loopholes. 

Deliverable 3.1’s key message is pragmatic: a fully centralised EU register appears challenging in the near term, given legal heterogeneity and national competences. For this reason, different options will be assessed, ranging from low-interoperability models, such as a data hub collecting and reprocessing data from national registers, to more harmonised solutions.  

Next steps: The assessment of the different options will be carried out through a co-creation process with stakeholders, aimed at comparing, refining and validating the identified alternatives. These include stronger links between national and EU registers, a possible European one-stop register, and federated models. For each option, roles and the distribution of responsibilities among Member States, producers, PROs and possible EU-level structures will also be examined. The final goal is to define a conceptual EU register model to be tested through a pilot project, together with recommendations to improve the accuracy, efficiency, interoperability, and transparency of national registers.