ISO and IEC Launch JTC 5: International Digital Product Passport Standardization Begins

A New Standards Body for the Digital Product Passport

The international standardization landscape around the Digital Product Passport (DPP) has found a new institutional home: ISO and IEC have officially established the Joint Technical Committee 5 (ISO/IEC JTC 5), dedicated exclusively to DPP standardization. The secretariat will be held by the German Institute for Standardization (DIN) — a signal that years of groundwork by German industry circles are now bearing fruit at the international level.

The committee's founding comes at a time when the EU's regulatory implementation of the DPP is already taking concrete shape. On April 29, 2026, the European Commission published the long-awaited draft implementing regulation for the central DPP Registry. Two parallel tracks are now converging: EU regulatory implementation on one side, and international technical harmonization on the other.

What JTC 5 Is — and Isn't — Meant to Do

Mandate and Scope

The mandate of ISO/IEC JTC 5 is clearly defined: the committee will develop international standards to ensure global interoperability of DPP systems. This includes data models, identifiers, interfaces, and trust infrastructures. What JTC 5 explicitly does not do is prescribe product-specific data requirements. Those remain the domain of sector-specific regulation — in the EU, for example, the ESPR Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 and the delegated regulations it spawns for individual product categories.

The division of labor is structurally similar to other standardization projects: JTC 5 provides the technical foundation, while national and supranational regulators define the substantive requirements on top of it.

DIN as Secretariat: Why Germany?

DIN's role as secretariat is no coincidence. Over the past several years, Germany has invested heavily in DPP concepts through DIN, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and industry associations — including work within the Catena-X ecosystem and the Plattform Industrie 4.0 initiative. That groundwork now feeds directly into international standardization efforts. For companies that have already built on German or European pilot projects, this provides a degree of conceptual continuity.

The Regulatory Context: EU ESPR and the Central Registry

What the Implementing Regulation Requires

The implementing regulation for the DPP Registry published on April 29, 2026 specifies how the central registry envisioned in the ESPR Regulation is to function technically and organizationally. The registry itself is deliberately lean: it stores only the product's Unique Identifier (UID), the resolver endpoint, and the associated commodity code. The actual product data — material composition, repairability index, carbon footprint — remains with the manufacturer or a designated data provider.

This architectural decision has far-reaching consequences: it shifts responsibility for data availability and quality onto economic operators. The ESPR Regulation requires that registry entries remain available and up to date for at least 10 years after a product's last placement on the market — a requirement that places significant demands on data maintenance and system stability.

Timeline: Textiles and Batteries First

The first product-specific rules — such as those for batteries starting in February 2027 under Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, and for textiles expected around 2028 under the ESPR — make clear that the timeline is ambitious. Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 already serves as a precursor with its own DPP requirements. Manufacturers in these sectors face the most immediate pressure to act.

Technical Interoperability: Where JTC 5 and GS1 Intersect

GS1 Digital Link as the De Facto Foundation

In parallel with regulatory developments, the GS1 Sunrise 2027 deadline is approaching — the point at which retail point-of-sale systems must be able to read 2D barcodes. GS1 Digital Link is not merely a barcode format; it is a URI structure that links product identifiers to web resolvers. By using GS1 Digital Link, you can route to specific datasets via structured link types such as gs1:sustainabilityInfo or gs1:epcis — for example, separating the DPP dataset from logistics documentation.

A typical GS1 Digital Link URI for a product with a GTIN looks like this:

https://id.gs1.org/01/04012345678901/21/ABC123

Here, /01/ represents the GTIN (Application Identifier 01) and /21/ the serial number (AI 21). The resolver then redirects to the appropriate endpoint depending on context — for the DPP, for instance, to the data provider operated by the manufacturer.

What JTC 5 Can Contribute to Resolver Infrastructure

This is one of the central open questions: how does the registry architecture described in the EU implementing regulation relate to existing GS1 resolver infrastructures? The central EU Registry functions as an authoritative directory service pointing to decentralized resolvers. GS1 Digital Link already offers a mature resolver logic. JTC 5 could — and should — close this gap by defining a normative mapping between the two approaches.

Without such standardization, fragmentation looms: manufacturers selling globally could potentially be required to serve multiple registry systems — the EU Registry for the European market, and separate systems for Asia or North America. A JTC 5 standard could serve as the common denominator.

Practical Implications for Companies

Act Now or Wait for Standards?

The establishment of JTC 5 raises a strategic question for companies: should you wait for international standards before implementing DPP solutions? The answer is nuanced.

For companies operating primarily in the EU single market and falling under the first ESPR product categories, waiting is not an option. Regulatory deadlines run independently of standardization progress. The smart move is to adopt architectures now that are compatible with foreseeable standards: GS1 Digital Link as the identifier and resolver foundation, lean registry entries aligned with the EU model, and a clear separation between publicly accessible DPP data and internal operational data.

For companies with global distribution, however, developments at JTC 5 are strategically more significant. You should actively monitor the standardization work and — where possible — contribute to the process through national mirror committees (in Germany: DIN).

Data Architecture: Decisions You Can Make Today

Regardless of where standardization stands, several architectural decisions can already be made today with a high degree of future-proofing:

Unique product identifiers: GTINs or other GS1 keys are anticipated in both the EU Registry draft and GS1 Digital Link.
Decentralized data storage: The EU architecture relies on resolvers, not a central database. Manufacturers must operate their own endpoints or commission a provider to do so.
Long-term availability: The ESPR's 10-year requirement demands robust hosting and archiving strategies.
Machine readability: QR codes per ISO/IEC 18004 or DataMatrix are the preferred physical carriers — both can be populated with GS1 Digital Link URIs.

Assessment: What JTC 5 Will Change

The establishment of ISO/IEC JTC 5 is not an immediate game-changer, but it is an important structural signal. International standards take time — typically three to five years before an ISO/IEC standard is ratified. The first JTC 5 standards will therefore not be available until 2028 or 2029 at the earliest.

What changes right now is the quality of coordination: for the first time, a dedicated committee provides a recognized international platform where regulators, industry, and standards organizations can align on DPP architectures. This reduces the risk that national or regional solutions will lead into dead ends.

For the European Commission, JTC 5 also represents an obligation: it will need to develop its technical specifications in dialogue with international standardization efforts — or risk building a EU Registry architecture that cannot connect with the rest of the world. Given the export interests of European manufacturers, that would be a significant competitive disadvantage.