What Article 6 requires
All packaging placed on the EU market must be recyclable — a general obligation that applies from 12 August 2026, not from 2030. Three things land later and are often collapsed into one: the design-for-recycling criteria (delegated acts, not yet adopted); the binding performance grades A / B / C from 1 Jan 2030, with at least grade B required from 1 Jan 2038 (recital 28), for the packaging categories listed in Annex II; and the "recycled at scale" limb from 1 Jan 2035. The grade thresholds themselves ARE in the text — Annex II Table 3 sets grade A at 95% or more, B at 80% or more, C at 70% or more, and treats anything below 70% as technically non-recyclable. What the delegated acts still owe is the design-for-recycling criteria and the weighting that turn a given packaging unit into that percentage.
When Article 6 applies
One line per dated paragraph. Applies — the date has passed. Firm — written in the regulation, nothing in the pipeline can push it back. Conditional — a floor: the obligation starts on that date, or a set number of months after the act it waits on enters into force, whichever is later.
| Paragraph | Date | What starts | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art. 6 | Recyclable packaging | Applies |
Annexes Article 6 calls
Annex II — Packaging categories. Classifies packaging for the purposes of Article 6. Table 1 lists the packaging formats; Table 2 sets the categories against which the "recycled at scale" assessment is made. Recital 28 ties the recyclability grades to these categories. Part 1 also carries the 11 essential requirements that any packaging placed on the EU market must meet, which the Article 39 declaration asserts against. No numeric threshold per grade is confirmed on primary sources — do not quote one, and note that no third table is attested. Text on EUR-Lex
Related articles
Read the text
Article 6 on EUR-Lex · Regulation (EU) 2025/40, full text
Legal review of 2026-09-02
Each date above is a literal read from the regulation or the Commission guidance, never derived by arithmetic from entry into force. A date present in the reference with no entry in the catalogue fails our build.