Today is August 12, 2026. That's the date Amazon set as its internal enforcement point for the EU's new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, known as PPWR. If you sell on any Amazon EU marketplace, and you've been relying on Amazon's "Pay on Behalf" program to handle your packaging compliance, that arrangement is over as of today.
This isn't a warning. It's the deadline.
What Changed and Why
The EU's PPWR took effect today as a regulation applying directly across all 27 EU member states, replacing the older packaging directive. The key change for Amazon sellers: under PPWR, marketplaces are now required to verify that their sellers hold valid EPR registrations in every EU country where they sell packaged products. Amazon can no longer act as a compliance proxy on your behalf.
EPR stands for Extended Producer Responsibility. It's the system EU countries use to fund packaging waste collection and recycling. Sellers who place packaged products on the market in an EU country are required to hold a valid registration number in that country's EPR scheme and to report their packaging volumes. The obligation applies per country, not per marketplace.
Before today, Amazon's Pay on Behalf program gave sellers a way to participate in certain national EPR schemes without holding their own registration. Germany was the primary example, where Amazon managed LUCID registration on behalf of sellers who opted in. That arrangement no longer satisfies the PPWR requirement. You need your own registration numbers, in your own name, in each relevant country.
Which Countries Are Affected
The obligation applies to every EU country where your products are sold or distributed. The most common ones for Amazon sellers are Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Sweden, and Ireland. If your products reach customers in those countries, you need EPR registration there.
Germany requires LUCID registration for packaging and a separate BattG number for products that include batteries. France requires registration with Citeo and has its own eco-participation system. Italy has CONAI. Each country has its own scheme, its own fees, and its own reporting cadence.
There is no single EU-wide EPR registration. You register country by country.
The UK is a separate case. It left the EU, so its EPR scheme is independent. If you sell on Amazon.co.uk, the UK Producer Responsibility Obligations apply under their own rules and their own deadlines.
What Amazon Is Enforcing
Amazon has been requiring sellers to enter EPR registration numbers in Seller Central via Account Health, per country. If a required registration number is missing or expired for a country where your products are active, Amazon can restrict or remove those listings in that marketplace.
It's not a fine or a tax bill. It's a listing block, which during Q4 inventory season is its own category of bad outcome.
If you haven't entered your registration numbers yet, the first step is checking Seller Central to see which EU countries your products are currently sold or distributed in. Then check Account Health to see which EPR fields are missing or flagged. That tells you where the exposure is.
If you're already registered in your relevant markets and your numbers are entered in Seller Central, you're in good shape. Today's deadline is about enforcement, not about new registrations becoming available. The registration process itself has been open for months.
What to Do If You're Not Registered
If you haven't registered yet, the practical reality is that registrations across multiple EU countries take time, weeks in most cases. You're past the deadline. The goal now is to move as fast as possible and to document your progress. Some national authorities are more aggressive about enforcement than others, and Amazon's enforcement is tied to whether your registration numbers are entered in Seller Central, not to whether you've completed registration with the national scheme.
Several third-party compliance services handle EU EPR registration on behalf of sellers, including multi-country registrations through a single vendor. These are not fast, but they're faster than navigating each national scheme independently. If you sell across multiple EU marketplaces and don't have a compliance resource already handling this, that's likely the most practical path forward.
If you want to work through your EU compliance exposure and figure out what needs to happen before Amazon takes action on your listings, schedule a call and we can help you assess where things stand and what to prioritize.