EU Battery Regs (2): Placing “on the market” and “putting into service”

The information in this post is now superceded.

NOTE – this blog post relates to a 2023 reserach project which was analysing the evolving EU Batteries Regulation.

The EU is soon to adopt new regulations for batteries and battery waste. These place new information requirements on a range of economic operators, who ‘place battery products “on the market” or “into service”. These terms are used by the EU to define who is responsible for supplying different information points (however in practice a third party may provide this information on the economic operator’s behalf). In this blog article, we introduce the EU’s definitions.

Please note, that while general shape of the regulation and it’s requirements is reasonably well known, until the regulation is officially published and comes into force, the regulatory text may change. See ‘regulatory background’ below for more detail.

The EU’s Basic Definitions

As per Article 1(1) and 1(1a), the EU’s new battery regulations establish new requirements for batteries, that must be satisfied before those products are ‘placed onto the market’ or ‘put into service’. Definitions of these terms are provided in Article 2. In accordance with the current regulatory text:

• Article 2(14) ‘placing on the market’ is the act of “making available a battery for the first time on the Union Market”. ‘Making available’ is further characterized by Article 2(15), as “any supply of a battery for distribution or use on the market in the course of a commercial activity, whether in return for payment or free of charge”.
• Article 2(16) ‘putting into service’ means the first use of a battery, for its intended purpose, within the Union.

Generally, these regulations are applicable for all new batteries, of any type (further detailed below), however there are exceptions for military, space and nuclear applications in Article 1(3).

As per Article 2(1), a ‘battery‘ is considered to be “any source of electrical energy generated by direct conversion of chemical energy and consisting of one or more non-rechargeable or rechargeable battery cells or of groups of them, such as battery packs and battery modules“. The EU generally separates batteries into five key application areas:

So, who is responsible for curating battery information?

The specific information requirements for battery passports, smart QR labels, and the EU’s Electronic Exchange System are detailed in separate blog posts. But generally speaking, it is the manufacturer that is responsible for the QR labeling requirements (Article 38(1)(b)), and it is the economic operators that place batteries on the market that are responsible for providing the necessary information to the EEES (Article 64(3)) and within the battery passport (Article 65(2)). As per article 40, when a manufacturer is not based in a member state, then the manufacturer must designate “a sole authorised representative” that will act on their behalf.

As per Article 2(19), an economic operator “means the manufacturer, the authorised representative, the importer, the distributor or the fulfilment service provider who is subject to obligations in relation to manufacturing batteries, making them available or placing them on the market or putting them into service in accordance with the present Regulation”. Importers or distributors are considered manufacturers and subject to the same requirements when (Article 44):

• the battery is placed on the market/into service under the importer or distributors own name or trademark (Article 44(a))
• a battery, already on the market, is modified by an importer or distributor in such a way that compliance is affected (Article 44(b))
• the importer or distributor changes the purpose of the battery, that was intended by the manufacturer (Article 44(c).

Additional to the above, information obligations are also applied to organisations that repurpose or remanufacture batteries (Article 59), with the EU expecting that these organisations will take responsibility for the battery passport electronic record once they have introduced changes to the battery (Article 65(6)).

---

We hope that this information is useful to build awareness of the regulations. However, we present this information (January 2023) without guarantee to its accuracy, given the transient nature of the EU regulatory development process, and the complexity of the regulations. Those seeking to understand the regulations in more detail are encouraged to read the original commission text and parliamentary amendments in more detail.