Current Projects and Initiatives

In 2025, ITSA was appointed as a liaison organisation to the CEN-CENELEC standards committee responsible for implementing the EU Digital Product Passport (DPP). ITSA is contributing to discussions on system design, with a focus on ensuring that emerging digital product identification frameworks incorporate appropriate security and authentication measures to mitigate the risks of non-compliance and illicit trade.

While the DPP is initially focused on products with significant environmental impact, such as batteries, it is expected to have a broader impact on traceability and compliance frameworks. This includes implications for tax stamp systems, serialisation and authentication technologies – making it important that DPP standards take into account the role of secure physical marking and its integration with digital systems.

ITSA has a longstanding presence in Brussels, promoting robust approaches that combine material security features with digital identifiers. This includes supporting systems in which physical markings – such as tax stamps – act as secure carriers of unique identifiers, linked to traceability systems.

ITSA advocates for approaches that strengthen the integration between physical marking and digital traceability, while also ensuring that system design supports effective enforcement. ITSA further supports governance models that ensure traceability and security systems are operated with a high degree of independence, minimising direct involvement by economic operators in the generation, management and control of critical system components.

The EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) traceability and authentication system is expected to be revised in the coming years. ITSA is engaging in the policy debate, drawing on experience with existing systems and international best practice.

As discussions evolve, developments such as the Digital Product Passport are likely to influence future approaches to product identification and traceability, including in the tobacco sector. This makes it important that lessons from existing systems are reflected in the revision process.

ITSA contributes to this debate from a unique position: as a body representing both the suppliers of secure physical marking and the authorities that deploy them, ITSA is able to offer balanced, technically grounded input into discussions that will shape the next generation of EU excise control systems.