EAN
Also known as: European Article Number, International Article Number, EAN-13
An EAN (European/International Article Number) is the 13-digit barcode standard used outside North America, functionally the international counterpart to the 12-digit UPC.
The EAN, officially the International Article Number, is a 13-digit GTIN barcode issued by GS1 and used to identify retail products worldwide, predominantly outside the United States and Canada. The familiar form is EAN-13; an 8-digit EAN-8 exists for very small packages.
A UPC-A (12 digits) is simply an EAN-13 with a leading zero, so the two systems are compatible — Amazon accepts both as product identifiers when creating a listing. The EAN, like the UPC, must be a genuine GS1-issued code tied to your brand prefix; Amazon increasingly verifies identifiers against the GS1 database and rejects reused or invalid codes.
When you list a new product on Amazon, you supply an EAN or UPC as the external identifier, and Amazon assigns its own internal ASIN. For FBA, the unit is then tracked by its FNSKU, not the EAN.
A seller listing a product in Amazon's UK and German marketplaces provides the GS1-issued EAN-13 "5012345678900" as the product identifier; Amazon matches or creates the ASIN from it.