The UN Transparency Protocol (UNTP) is an open standard for sharing trustworthy sustainability and compliance data along supply chains. Instead of collecting PDFs and spreadsheets from every supplier, each actor publishes signed digital credentials about its products, sites and certificates, and buyers or regulators check them automatically.
UNTP is developed by UN/CEFACT, the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, part of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). It is the technical side of UNECE Recommendation No. 49, Transparency at Scale, which UN/CEFACT adopted in July 2025.
How UNTP works
UNTP defines a family of verifiable credentials, each issued by the party best placed to vouch for the data:
- Digital Product Passport (DPP): issued by the shipper of goods. Carries product identity, characteristics and sustainability performance, such as emissions intensity or deforestation-free status, and links to supporting evidence.
- Digital Facility Record (DFR): issued by facility owners or operators. Describes the site's identity, location, ownership and sustainability performance.
- Digital Traceability Event (DTE): records what happened to products, using three event types: make, move and modify.
- Conformity Credential: issued by conformity assessment bodies. Gives an independent, verifiable assessment of a product, facility or organization against a standard or regulation.
- Digital Identity Anchor (DIA): issued by authoritative registers, such as business registers. Proves that a credential issuer is the registered company it claims to be.
Two foundations hold this together. Identity resolvers connect existing identifiers, such as a GTIN in a GS1 Digital Link or a business register number, to the credentials about them. The Verifiable Credentials Profile sets how every credential is signed with W3C Verifiable Credentials and decentralized identifiers (DIDs).
Together, these credentials form a connected graph of evidence across the value chain, without any central database.
Status in 2026
The UNTP specification is published at untp.unece.org and is described as suitable for pre-production pilots. Version 0.7.0 went through public review until 13 July 2026, and the team is working through the comments toward version 1.0. UNTP keeps public registers of software implementations, conformity schemes and identifier schemes.
The work is funded by the European Commission's DG INTPA through a UNECE project on traceability in the garment and footwear sector, which is why textiles are an early focus.
UNTP and the EU Digital Product Passport
The EU Digital Product Passport under ESPR is a regulatory record defined product group by product group. The UNTP passport is a lightweight business-to-business credential. They complement each other:
- UNTP credentials can carry the supplier data a brand needs to fill its EU passport, with proof of where each value came from.
- A brand can publish its declaration of conformity and certificates as credentials that customs, retailers and auditors verify automatically.
- Mapping UNTP to regional passport rules is an ongoing commitment of the project.
Other open formats, such as the Asset Administration Shell in industrial supply chains, serve similar goals in different sectors.
Who should look at UNTP
- Textile and apparel brands, where supplier transparency is the hardest part of passport readiness and rules like the Textile Labelling Regulation already ask for composition data.
- Suppliers and manufacturers who answer the same questions for many customers and want to publish their data once.
- Certification bodies that want their certificates to be checked automatically instead of copied.
- Companies exporting to several markets that need one data format for different rules.
How Veribl helps
Veribl publishes each product's passport, declaration of conformity and facility record as signed UN Transparency Protocol credentials, alongside JSON-LD and Asset Administration Shell formats. Supplier certificates issued as verifiable credentials have their signatures checked when they arrive.
See the open formats Veribl publishesOfficial sources
Frequently asked questions
Is the UN Transparency Protocol mandatory?
No. UNTP is a voluntary standard. It is designed to help companies meet regulatory and buyer requirements, including product passport rules, with interoperable and verifiable data.
How does UNTP relate to the EU Digital Product Passport?
UNTP defines its own Digital Product Passport credential, deliberately lightweight, for exchanging product data between businesses along the supply chain. Mapping to national and regional passport rules, including EU requirements, is an ongoing part of the work.
What credentials does UNTP define?
The Digital Product Passport (product data from the shipper), the Digital Facility Record (facility identity and performance), the Digital Traceability Event (make, move and modify events), the Conformity Credential (independent assessments from conformity assessment bodies) and the Digital Identity Anchor (binding a DID to a registered identity).
What technology does UNTP use?
UNTP credentials are W3C Verifiable Credentials using decentralized identifiers (DIDs), so each one is digitally signed, tamper-evident, revocable and independently verifiable. Identity resolvers link existing identifiers, such as GTINs or business register numbers, to the credentials about them.
What is UNECE Recommendation No. 49?
Recommendation No. 49, Transparency at Scale, is UNECE's policy guidance on traceability and transparency of sustainability information in global value chains. UN/CEFACT adopted it in July 2025, and UNTP is the technical protocol that implements it.
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