Germany Adopts Third Ordinance Amending Energy-Related Products Act Regulation (EVPG)

The EVPG amendment Germany practitioners have been tracking is now adopted: the Third Ordinance Amending the EVPG Regulation (Dritte Verordnung zur Änderung der EVPG-Verordnung) of 14 October 2026 was published in the Federal Law Gazette as BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 302. The instrument amends the national implementing ordinance under the German Energy-Related Products Act (Energieverbrauchsrelevante-Produkte-Gesetz, EVPG) and affects ecodesign and energy-efficiency obligations for energy-related products placed on the German market. The signal confidence on the adoption and publication is high; the detailed article-by-article content of the ordinance is only available from the Federal Law Gazette text itself, which is linked in the official sources section below.

The EVPG is Germany's national law transposing EU ecodesign legislation for energy-related products. It is the statutory vehicle through which EU ecodesign implementing measures — for example the implementing measure for electric motors and the implementing measure for electrical appliances in private households — are given effect and enforceability in German law (IEA policy record; Climate Policy Database record on the EVPG implementing measures).

The EVPG works in a two-layer structure familiar to anyone who has handled German product legislation. The Act (EVPG) sets out the framework: who is the responsible economic operator, what the conformity assessment and marking duties are, what market surveillance authorities may do, and what the penalty provisions are. The EVPG Regulation (EVPG-Verordnung, EVPGV) is the subordinate ordinance that lists and operationalises the specific product-level requirements. Amending ordinances — of which this is the third — are the mechanism used to keep that national list aligned with the current body of EU ecodesign implementing measures.

For manufacturers, importers and authorised representatives, the practical consequence of this structure is that the substantive technical requirement usually originates in a directly applicable EU implementing regulation, while the German ordinance governs how that requirement is enforced domestically — surveillance powers, administrative offences, and the designation of competent bodies. Both layers matter in an enforcement action.

The confirmed facts, from the official Federal Law Gazette record, are these:

I want to be precise about the limits of what is verified here. The adoption date, the Federal Law Gazette reference and the subject matter are confirmed by the official publication. The specific product groups added or amended, the transitional provisions, and any changes to the administrative offence catalogue are not established by any source available to me and must be read directly from the BGBl. text at the ELI link. Secondary databases (FAO FAOLEX, IEA, Climate Policy Database) carry records of the EVPG and earlier energy labelling ordinances but do not yet carry this amending instrument. Treat any third-party summary of its content as unverified until checked against the gazette.

The EVPGV is a national ordinance under the Energy-Related Products Act; it operates alongside, not instead of, directly applicable EU ecodesign law. That distinction decides where you look for the technical requirement and where you look for the penalty.

EU ecodesign implementing measures adopted as regulations apply directly in Germany without transposition. The EVPG and EVPGV supply the national enforcement scaffolding: designation of market surveillance competence, inspection and sampling powers, and the fines framework for breaches. As the EU moves from the Ecodesign Directive framework to the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) regime, national instruments of the EVPGV type are the point where Member State enforcement is re-anchored. Whether this specific Third Ordinance performs that re-anchoring is not confirmed by the sources available and must be read from the gazette text.

Ecodesign conformity in Germany is expressed through the CE marking route. Products covered by applicable ecodesign implementing measures must satisfy those measures before the CE marking is affixed and before the product is placed on the German market; the German federal administration publishes the baseline rights and duties on CE marking through Bundesportal, and DIN maintains the reference material on the relationship between harmonised standards and legal presumption of conformity (Bundesportal; DIN, "Standards and the law — CE marking"). An ecodesign non-conformity is therefore simultaneously a CE marking non-conformity, with the declaration of conformity and technical documentation exposed in the same inspection.

German law treats ecodesign and energy labelling as adjacent but separate regimes — the energy efficiency labelling legislation has its own amending ordinances in the German legislative record (FAOLEX record on the ordinance amending the Energy Efficiency Labelling Act and other energy provisions). A product can be ecodesign-compliant and label-non-compliant, and both are surveilled. Do not assume one audit covers both.

Any manufacturer, importer or authorised representative placing energy-related products on the German market is in scope of the EVPG framework. On the evidence of the EVPG implementing measures already recorded in official policy databases, the product families historically governed under this act include electric motors and electrical appliances for private households (IEA; Climate Policy Database). Those two categories are the firmest anchors available for scoping.

The operational exposure differs by role. Manufacturers carry the conformity assessment, technical documentation and declaration of conformity burden. Importers carry verification duties and are the economic operator German market surveillance authorities can most easily reach. Authorised representatives carry whatever documentation-holding mandate their written mandate specifies — and in ecodesign cases that mandate is routinely the first document requested.

The second-order effect of a national amending ordinance is usually not a new test. It is a new or re-scoped administrative offence provision, which changes the risk calculus for products already on the market with marginal documentation. If the Third Ordinance touches the Bußgeld catalogue, legacy stock documentation becomes the exposure, not new production. I flag that as inference from how previous EVPGV amendments have functioned, not as a statement about this instrument's content.

The baseline EVPG ecodesign obligations for manufacturers are unchanged by the existence of an amending ordinance and remain the correct starting point: identify every applicable EU ecodesign implementing measure for each product family, meet the specific energy efficiency and resource efficiency requirements set out in it, compile the technical documentation, apply the internal design control or management system conformity assessment route specified in the applicable measure, issue the EU declaration of conformity, and affix the CE marking before placing the product on the German market (Bundesportal CE marking guidance; DIN standards-and-law reference).

What the Third Ordinance changes within that chain cannot be stated without reading BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 302. The honest instruction is: pull the gazette text, diff it against the consolidated EVPGV, and scope your action from the diff rather than from any summary.

The ordinance was adopted on 14 October 2026 and published in Federal Law Gazette 2026 I No. 302. Its status is recorded as adopted and in force at the adopted stage. German amending ordinances normally specify their own entry-into-force date in the final article, and transitional provisions for products already placed on the market are stated there if they exist — both must be read from the published text. No source available to me states an entry-into-force date distinct from the adoption date, and I will not invent one.

On enforcement: no authority communication announcing a surveillance campaign tied to this ordinance has been identified. Statements that enforcement will intensify would be speculation.

Start with the primary text. Download BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 302 from the ELI link, identify every article of the EVPGV that the Third Ordinance amends, and record the entry-into-force article verbatim in your regulatory register. Do not work from a translation or a database abstract — neither FAOLEX nor the IEA policy database carries this instrument yet.

Then scope by product family. Build a list of every SKU you place on the German market that falls under an EU ecodesign implementing measure, prioritising electric motors and household electrical appliances, since those are the categories with confirmed EVPG implementing measures in the official record. For each, confirm the declaration of conformity names the current applicable implementing regulation rather than a repealed predecessor — stale regulatory citations in DoCs are the single most common finding in ecodesign documentation review.

Check your technical documentation retention and the authorised representative mandate next. German market surveillance requests go to the economic operator established in the Union, and an unresponsive or wrongly mandated representative converts a documentation question into a formal non-compliance file.

Run energy labelling as a separate workstream. The German energy efficiency labelling obligations sit in their own legislative chain and are amended independently of the EVPGV.

Finally, decide whether the amendment is substantive for you before committing resource. If the Third Ordinance only updates cross-references to EU implementing regulations your products already meet, the correct action is a register update and a documentation citation refresh — not a retest programme.

Watch for the consolidated version of the EVPG-Verordnung incorporating the Third Ordinance to appear on the federal legal information portal, and for FAOLEX, the IEA policy database and the Climate Policy Database to publish records of BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 302 — those records typically lag the gazette by weeks to months and are a useful cross-check on scope. Separately, track the EU-level transition from the Ecodesign Directive framework to ESPR, since further national EVPGV amendments will follow EU implementing measures as they are adopted.