Digital Product Passports for Circular Supply Chains
European normative reference in the JTC 24 set: identifiers in EN 18219, data carriers in EN 18220, data exchange in EN 18216, interfaces in EN 18222, storage and persistence in EN 18221, and overall system interoperability in EN 18223 [ 19 ]. The Trusted Dataspace band spanning all layers in Figure 4-1 also carries the EU DPP Registry( ESPR Article 13, July 2026) as a cross-cutting index service, consistent with the federated architecture of Section 5 [ 25 ]. Open source implementations already cover every layer: in the FIWARE Data Space Connector the identifier and trust layers run on W3C DID and Verifiable Credential services validated by the VCVerifier, the asset and exchange layers on the Orion LD Context Broker over ETSI NGSI LD, the authorization function on Keyrock, and discovery on a DCAT catalogue bridged by the IDS Dataspace Protocol, giving the stack a vendor neutral reference instantiation [ 22 ].
Figure 4-1: The DPP interoperability stack, each layer on an open specification. The Trusted Dataspace band( right) spans all layers; the Cross-border Recognition Bridge appears at the trust layer.
Each layer is governed by an existing open specification. The integration cost sits in the mappings between layers, not within any one layer.
5 A PROPOSED ARCHITECTURAL AND GOVERNANCE PATTERN
Drawing the pilot lessons together with the framework alignment in Section 4, we propose an architectural and governance pattern with five principles, an implementation-readiness matrix, and a reference architecture.
5.1 FIVE PRINCIPLES
1. Open standards by default. Every layer in the interoperability stack must be implementable on at least one royalty-free open specification. Where a proprietary platform is used, it must publish a conformance mapping to an open standard at the same layer.
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