Answers / one question
When does the European Accessibility Act apply, and is 2027 the deadline?
The duties apply from 28 June 2025, when the national measures had to be in force. Transposition was due by 28 June 2022. The date 28 June 2027 is not a general deadline: it is the latest date a member state may set for the Article 4(8) duty on answering 112 emergency communications, and only if it uses that derogation.
The three dates in Article 31
Article 31(1) required member states to adopt and publish the national measures by 28 June 2022. That date has passed and is not a date a business can plan to. Article 31(2) required the measures to apply from 28 June 2025, which is when the product and service duties began for products placed and services provided from that day.
Article 31(3) is the only date derogation. A member state may decide to apply the measures for the Article 4(8) obligations no later than 28 June 2027. Article 4(8) is about the answering of 112 emergency communications by the most appropriate public safety answering point. It is not the product deadline and not the service deadline.
Why the 2027 date is so often repeated
A summary that takes 2027 from Article 31(3) without its condition turns a narrow emergency-communications derogation into a general extension. The error is costly because a programme built on 2027 will miss the 2025 duties by two years. If a board paper or a supplier questionnaire uses 2027 as the deadline, correct it with the article and the condition attached to it.
What to do with each date
Use 28 June 2025 as the operating date. Check the national transposition measure for each member state where you place a product or provide a service, because that measure carries the penalty, the authority and any national option. For a public safety answering point, or a supplier to one, ask whether the member state used the Article 31(3) derogation; without it the duty applied in 2025.
The dates that are still ahead
The service transition in Article 32(1) runs to 28 June 2030 for products lawfully used before 28 June 2025, and service contracts agreed before that date can run to expiry but no longer than five years. The self-service terminal transition in Article 32(2) can run to the end of the terminal's economically useful life, capped at twenty years after entry into use. The first Commission report is due by 28 June 2030.
The provisions behind this answer
Check it against the source
Read the provision at EUR-Lex, CELEX 32019L0882. This page states the rule in our own words; the instrument governs. Not legal advice; does not certify.