Access tiers of the battery passport: who may see which data?

The battery passport has three access tiers. The model data in Annex XIII point 1 is public and can be read by anyone through the QR code. Persons with a legitimate interest also see the restricted model data in point 2 (detailed composition, spare parts, dismantling and safety measures) and the data on the individual battery in point 4. Notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission see point 2 and the test results in point 3 (Art. 77(2)).

Who exactly has a legitimate interest is still open. The Commission was to settle that in an implementing act by 18 August 2026 (Art. 77(9)); when we checked on 25 October 2026, only a draft existed. What the draft means for companies is discussed in our article on access tiers in the battery passport; the wider picture is in the battery passport guide.

Which information belongs to which tier?

Annex XIII sorts the content of the passport into four points. Three describe the battery model, one the individual battery, ‘including resulting from the use of that battery’ (Art. 77(2)).

Two details are easy to miss. Point 2 is open to two groups: the Annex heading names persons with a legitimate interest and the Commission, and Article 77(2)(b) adds notified bodies and market surveillance authorities. And information goes into the passport only as far as it applies to the battery’s category; the capacity threshold for exhaustion, for instance, concerns electric vehicle batteries only.

Dismantling information covers at least exploded diagrams, the disassembly sequence, fastening techniques, tools, warnings, and the number and layout of cells (point 2(c)). Repairers and recyclers need it, yet it can be commercially sensitive, so access is to be kept to the minimum (Art. 77(9)(c)).

Who sees what?

‘Yes’ means that Article 77(2) opens this point of Annex XIII to this group.

The last row follows from Article 77(4) and Article 78(c): whoever is responsible for the passport, or acts on its behalf, stores and maintains all of it. When responsibility moves on, so does this role (Art. 77(7)).

The diagram above draws the tiers as rings, but strictly speaking they are not nested. Data on the individual battery is accessible only to persons with a legitimate interest, test results only to the authorities. The draft act under Article 77(9) would allow purchasers to pass the data on the individual battery to market surveillance authorities.

What is the legitimate interest for?

The Regulation defines legitimate interest by purpose, not by profession (Art. 77(2), third subparagraph):

• Dismantling and composition. Information on dismantling the battery, including safety measures, and on the detailed composition of the model, where essential for repairers, remanufacturers, second-life operators and recyclers to carry out their activities.
• Individual batteries on the energy market. Information on an individual battery, where essential for the purchaser, or parties acting on its behalf, to make it available to independent energy aggregators or energy market participants.

For the implementing act, Article 77(9) sets three criteria: the need to assess the battery’s status and residual value; the need to choose between and carry out re-use, repurposing, remanufacturing and recycling; and keeping access to commercially sensitive information to a minimum. Under Article 78, access is free of charge (point (b)), and the rights to read or change information follow Annex XIII and that act (point (f)). See also legitimate interest in the glossary.

What does the draft implementing act provide?

The draft assigns individual letters of Annex XIII to named groups of persons.

Under the draft, anyone with access may download and use the information but keep it no longer than necessary (Art. 2(3)), and only to assess the battery’s status, residual value and further use, or to repair, repurpose, remanufacture or recycle it or choose between those routes (Art. 2(1)). Purchasers and those acting for them may also use point 4 data to make the battery available to independent aggregators or market participants (Art. 2(2)).

Four things stand out:

• The draft does not treat safety measures as commercially sensitive, so they may be shared freely (recital 3).
• Data on the individual battery goes only to the purchaser and those acting on its behalf, so a repairer or recycler gets it only when working for the purchaser.
• Whoever takes responsibility for a waste battery is missing from the list, because it sees the full passport anyway (recital 2).
• The economic operator placing the battery on the market may allow entitled persons to share or publish information (Art. 2(4)(e)).

How is access checked in practice?

Not through a central system. According to the Commission FAQ, the implementing act will determine who may access restricted data and what they may do with it, but not the authentication mechanism, which in a decentralised system cannot readily be specified or run centrally (question 6.4). National registers of recyclers, waste operators and similar actors may help confirm their status.

The economic operator, or an operator it has authorised in writing, hosts the passport and manages access to it (question 6.5; Art. 78(c)). The digital product passport registry stores the batteries’ unique identifiers (Art. 13 of the Ecodesign Regulation) and facilitates access for public authorities where legislation provides for it, but it gives no access to the full passport.

So the information in points 2 to 4 belongs in the passport and must be protected (Art. 77(2), Art. 78(f) and (h)), even before it is settled who may read it. Until the act applies, we recommend a documented procedure of your own:

1. Record the purpose, for example dismantling by a recycler or marketing by the purchaser.
2. Ask for proof of status, for example a permit as a treatment facility, a register entry or proof of purchase.
3. Time-limit grants and be able to revoke them at any time.
4. Log every read: who, when, which tier, which passport version.
5. Open only what the purpose requires (Art. 77(9)(c)).

Is read access to the battery management system the same thing?

No. Article 14(2) grants a separate right, independent of the passport and of the act under Article 77(9). Since 18 August 2024, the battery management system of stationary battery energy storage systems, LMT and electric vehicle batteries has had to hold up-to-date data on the parameters in Annex VII (Art. 14(1)). Whoever has legally purchased the battery gets read-only access to it through the BMS at any time, without discrimination and respecting the manufacturer’s intellectual property rights.

So the passport does not replace read access to the BMS, nor the other way round.

Which fields sit in the restricted tiers?

Our field registry assigns every field a tier and cites the point of Annex XIII or the article behind it. For stationary storage, the legitimate-interest tier begins like this (the ‘Requirement’ column refers to that category):

The table holds both kinds of restricted information: composition, dismantling instructions, spare-part sources and safety instructions describe the model (point 2), while status, state of charge, remaining capacity and full cycles describe the individual battery (point 4).

Our authority tier is small:

The test reports correspond to Annex XIII point 3. Annex XIII does not require the manufacturer identifier (GLN or EORI number); our registry keeps it as an optional entry in the authority tier. Every field with its tier, filterable by category, is on the data fields page.

How does BatteryPass handle the access tiers?

BatteryPass treats the tier as a property of every field:

• Server-side filtering. Public pages, the data behind the QR code and public exports contain only the public tier; restricted information shows up there only as a note that it exists in testing.
• Preview per tier. Before publishing, you see what the public, persons with a legitimate interest and authorities would see in testing.
• Access to restricted tiers. Until the act defines who is entitled, the decision is yours: an owner or admin grants a tier to an email address, with a purpose and a term of at most one year, revocable at any time. Every read is logged in your organisation’s audit log; documents in restricted tiers are listed by title only limited.

In BatteryPass, an authority grant includes the legitimate-interest fields, and so also individual battery data that Article 77(2) does not expressly open to authorities. The grants do not implement the act under Article 77(9), which does not exist yet; they give you a traceable procedure in the meantime, and you stay responsible for the data and for every grant. More on the security page.