Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/574Show full title

Article 21 Data carriers for the Unique Identifiers

1. Unit level UIs shall be encoded using at least one of the following types of data carriers:

(a) an optical device-readable Data Matrix with error detection and correction equivalent to or higher than those of the Data Matrix ECC200. Barcodes conforming to ISO/IEC 16022:2006 shall be presumed to fulfil the requirements set out in this point;

(b) an optical device-readable QR Code with a recovery capacity of approximately 30 %. Barcodes conforming to ISO/IEC 18004:2015 with the error correction level H shall be presumed to fulfil the requirements set out in this point;

(c) an optical device-readable DotCode with the error detection and correction equivalent to or higher than those provided with the Reed-Solomon error correction algorithm with the number of check characters (NC) equal to three plus the number of data characters (ND) divided by two (NC = 3 + ND/2). Barcodes conforming to the ISS DotCode Symbology Specification published by the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (‘AIM’) (revision 3.0, August 2014) shall be presumed to fulfil the requirements set out in this point.

2. In the case of unit level UIs delivered electronically, manufacturers and importers are responsible for encoding unit level UIs in accordance with paragraph 1.

3. In the case of unit level UIs delivered physically, ID issuers are responsible for encoding the codes generated pursuant to Article 8(2), in accordance with paragraph 1.

4. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, manufacturers and importers may add the time stamp separately from the data carrier in the format YYMMDDhh as a human readable code.

5. Aggregated level UIs shall be encoded by economic operators using at least one of the following types of data carriers:

(a) an optical device-readable Data Matrix with error detection and correction equivalent to or higher than those of the Data Matrix ECC200. Barcodes conforming to ISO/IEC 16022:2006 shall be presumed to fulfil the requirements set out in this point;

(b) an optical device-readable QR Code with a recovery capacity of approximately 30 %. Barcodes conforming to ISO/IEC 18004:2015 with the error correction level H shall be presumed to fulfil the requirements set out in this point;

(c) an optical device-readable Code 128 with the error detection equivalent to or higher than the one provided with the algorithm based on the even/odd — bar/space character parity and the check character. Barcodes conforming to ISO/IEC 15417:2007 shall be presumed to fulfil the requirements set out in this point.

6. In order to distinguish the data carriers referred to in paragraphs 1 and 5 from any other data carrier placed on unit packets or aggregated packaging, economic operators may add the marking ‘TTT’ next to such data carriers.