PPWR.

Regulation (EU) 2025/40, adopted on 19 December 2024, replaced Directive 94/62/EC and turned EU packaging law from a directive each member state transposed its own way into a regulation that applies directly. Article 70 repeals the old directive with effect from 12 August 2026, which is the same day the regulation itself starts to apply. Almost nothing operational bites then: recyclability grades, minimum recycled content in plastic and the empty space cap all hang off delegated or implementing acts the Commission has not adopted yet, so their deadlines read “1 January 2030 or N years from the entry into force of those acts, whichever is the latest”. Shops that plan against a client alert instead of the regulation pick 2026 as the wall and then find the real work is producer registration in every member state they ship to, packaging data, and box sizes. A print-on-demand operation ships one order in one carton, so PPWR reaches it as transport packaging: how much air is in the box, and who is on the register as producer for it.