The short answer
DIWASS—the Digital Waste Shipment System—is the EU’s central digital system for the electronic submission and exchange of information and documents related to shipments of waste. It is being developed by the European Commission under the recast Waste Shipment Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1157.
The distinction matters: the Waste Shipment Regulation is the law; DIWASS is the system that implements its digital obligations. The regulation has been in force since May 2024. The obligation to use DIWASS for notification and movement documents applied from 21 May 2026.
DIWASS serves two functions: a central system that competent authorities and businesses access directly through a website (the GUI), and a central hub that exchanges information with local authority systems and with corporate or commercial software through an API.
The dates that matter
Since 21 May 2026, DIWASS must be used by EU competent authorities and economic operators for notification documents wherever an EU Member State is the country of dispatch, destination or transit. Movement documents under a consented notification must also be generated in DIWASS.
Annex VII documents—for waste shipped under the general information requirements—follow a transitional approach. Between 21 May and 31 December 2026 they should continue to be handled largely as before, primarily on paper, after the Expert Group on Waste identified interconnection challenges at its 27 March 2026 meeting.
| Date | What changes |
|---|---|
| May 2024 | Regulation (EU) 2024/1157 in force |
| 21 May 2026 | DIWASS mandatory for notification and movement documents involving an EU Member State |
| 21 May – 31 Dec 2026 | Annex VII documents continue mainly on paper (transitional approach) |
| From 2027 | Publication of information on shipments under the general information requirements begins |
Who must register
Every operator involved in a shipment must be registered: the notifier, waste producer, person arranging the shipment, carrier, consignee and waste receiving facility. DIWASS does not allow operator or authority details to be typed in manually—each party is selected from a drop-down list. If a party is not registered, the document cannot be completed.
The same rule extends beyond the EU. Third-country authorities and operators involved in shipments to, from or through the EU must also be registered, even where they will not actively use the system. The Waste Shipment Regulation also applies in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework, so Northern Irish operators and authorities use DIWASS.
What DIWASS does not do
DIWASS does not verify that the data entered is correct—validation remains the job of the competent authorities. It performs only the limited checks described in the Commission’s instruction manuals.
It is also not a reporting tool and not an inspection database: EU inspection authorities have read-only access, which supports planning and enforcement. The Commission currently charges no fees for using DIWASS, and documents can be extracted as PDFs.