Market Surveillance
Market Surveillance and DPP Enforcement
How market surveillance authorities will check DPP compliance — inspection points, penalties and a readiness checklist for audits.
ESPR is enforced through Market Surveillance Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, which means DPP compliance is checked by the same mechanism as product safety: authorities take a product from the market, request documentation and test it where needed.
Inspection points
| Point | What is checked |
|---|---|
| Customs | Registry entry, commodity code match. See DPP checks at customs |
| Store / online | Carrier presence, whether the passport opens, public tier content |
| Document review | Conformity file, test reports, data evidence |
| Laboratory | Whether the product matches the declaration (substance content, for example) |
What they look for
- Is the carrier present and readable? A worn, unscannable QR is non-compliance.
- Is the passport accessible? Free, app-free, on a smartphone.
- Are mandatory fields populated? An empty mandatory field is a direct finding.
- Is the declaration true? Consistent with the label, test reports and the product itself?
- Is there a registry entry? Is the identifier registered and does the address resolve?
Penalties
Member States set their own regimes. ESPR requires penalties to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive, and allows measures such as temporary exclusion from public procurement. In practice:
- Withdrawal or recall from the market
- Fines
- Blocked release for free circulation at customs
- Temporary exclusion from public tenders
See the cost of non-compliance.
An audit readiness checklist
- Is the link between the conformity file and passport data established?
- Does every critical field carry a source reference? See DPP data quality management.
- Is version history reachable — can you answer "what did you declare last year"? See audit trails and versioning.
- Has the carrier been durability tested? See DPP QR codes.
- Are "unknown" and "not applicable" fields marked correctly?
Frequently asked questions
Will an inspector come to me directly?
The addressee is the economic operator placing the product on the market — for a non-EU manufacturer, the importer or authorised representative. The data request still lands on you. See economic operators.
What happens if a field is wrong?
Corrections are made as a new version. A single error and systematic misdeclaration are treated differently.
How is online selling policed?
Marketplaces also carry verification duties, and authorities can inspect listings. See DPP for e-commerce and marketplaces.
