What happens to the battery stock you already have on 18 February 2027

WHEN EXISTING BATTERY STOCK MUST COMPLY

MEASURE	FIGURE	SOURCE
Passport duty applies from	18 FEB 2027	REG. (EU) 2023/1542, ART. 77(1)
Earlier stock deadline (EUROMOT precedent)	18 AUG 2024	EUROMOT FAQ 2025
Transitional rules given in Article	95	REG. (EU) 2023/1542, ART. 95

If you place an LMT, industrial (above 2 kWh), or electric vehicle battery on the EU market, or put one into service, from 18 February 2027, Article 77(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 requires it to have an electronic battery passport.REG. (EU) 2023/1542, ART. 77(1) That duty attaches to the act of placing the battery on the market or putting it into service, not to when it was manufactured.ART. 77(1) Stock built long before that date can still trigger the duty, and stock built long before it can just as easily fall clear of the duty. What decides it is not when a battery was made. It is what happens to that specific unit, and when.

The rest of this piece works through why, one definition at a time, and then turns to what a manufacturer, importer, or distributor holding pre-deadline stock should actually do about it.

Three events, three definitions

The regulation defines the events precisely, because the whole question of existing stock turns on which event has or hasn't yet happened to a given battery.

Article 3(1) point (16) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 defines placing on the market as the first making available of a battery on the Union market.REG. (EU) 2023/1542, ART. 3(1)(16) Making available on the market is defined separately, as any supply of a battery for distribution or use on the Union market in a commercial activity, paid or free.ART. 3(1)(17) Putting into service is the first use, for its intended purpose, of a battery in the Union that was not previously placed on the market.ART. 3(1)(18)

Three separate tests, each keyed to something that either has happened to a battery or hasn't yet.

The rule runs per unit, not per model

None of that matters much if the passport requirement is read as attaching to a product line rather than to each physical battery. It attaches to each physical battery.

The Blue Guide, the Commission's guidance on how the EU's product rules work in practice, states in section 2.2 that the concept of making available on the market refers to each individual product, not a product type.COMMISSION NOTICE 2022/C 247/01, §2.2 Section 2.3 states that a product is placed on the market when it is made available for the first time on the Union market, and that individual units of the same model placed on the market after new requirements become applicable must comply with those new requirements.COMMISSION NOTICE 2022/C 247/01, §2.3

Batteries off the same production line, carrying the same model number, can land on opposite sides of the passport deadline depending on nothing but when each one is placed on the market or put into service.

What already happened stays valid

None of this is new territory for the regulation's line of products. It follows a pattern the battery rules have used before.

Recital 11 of Regulation 2023/1542 states that retailers, wholesalers and sales divisions of manufacturers do not need to meet the regulation's relevant requirements before the date those requirements start to apply. EUROMOT's FAQ of May 2025, at question 4.6, records how that principle played out in practice: batteries already held in stock before 18 August 2024 did not need a Declaration of Conformity for that earlier deadline.

Both read the same way: a deadline binds what happens on or after it, not what already happened before it. A battery already supplied, or already put to its first use, before its deadline does not become non-compliant retroactively because the calendar turned.

What Article 95 actually covers

You might expect a dedicated transitional-rules article to settle existing stock directly. It's worth reading to see why it doesn't.

Article 95 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, titled "Repeal and transitional rules," is the regulation's only transitional-rules article, and it lists three continuing provisions carried over from the repealed Directive 2006/66/EC.REG. (EU) 2023/1542, ART. 95 A search of the act for the terms "existing stock," "already manufactured," "grace period" and "sell-through" turns up zero hits.

There is no dedicated carve-out for stock on hand, written or implied. The regulation relies on the ordinary per-unit reading of placing on the market and putting into service to answer the question instead, the same reading section 2.3 of the Blue Guide sets out.

What to do with the stock you're holding

Apply that per-unit test to the position your stock is actually in, one shipment at a time.

If a unit was already sold on to an EU distributor before the deadline, that supply was the placing-on-the-market event, and it already happened. The date on the calendar later doesn't reopen it.

If a unit is sitting in your own warehouse, not yet supplied to anyone, neither placing on the market nor putting into service has happened to it yet. Whenever that event finally happens, the passport duty attaches then, whatever the unit's manufacture record says.

If a unit is in transit to the EU, the question is the same one: has a supply to another party already taken place, or is the unit still yours, moving between your own locations? The transit itself is not the event. The supply is.

If a unit is already installed in equipment that's in use, putting into service already happened. That event, not the date the passport rule takes effect, is what already closed the question for that unit.

None of that is a new rule. It's the same placing-on-the-market and putting-into-service test from earlier in this piece, run against whichever position your stock is actually in.

What to do with it now, before the deadline arrives: record the placing-on-the-market or putting-into-service date for each unit, not just each model, as you supply it or put it to use. Keep the evidence behind that date, whatever form it takes in your business, the same way you'd keep proof of any other compliance date. The distinction that matters here is per battery, and a spreadsheet that only tracks compliance per model won't answer the question when someone asks it.

For the wider set of dates around this one, the dates that actually bind you lays out which are fixed and which can still move. The free readiness checker turns your specifics into a prioritized gap report in about three minutes, no signup.

General information, not legal advice. Verify obligations against the cited regulations on EUR-Lex, or with counsel. Citations checked September 4, 2026.