The General Product Safety Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/988, has applied since 13 December 2024, and unlike a directive it needed no national transposition: "This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States." It rewrote what an online product listing must display, who must exist inside the EU before you can sell at all, and what you owe consumers when a product is recalled. Every quote below is verbatim from the regulation text on EUR-Lex or the European Commission's own pages, with capture dates in our source ledger.
Short answer: every online offer must show the manufacturer's name and address, an EU responsible person if the manufacturer sits outside the EU, product identification including a picture, and any safety warnings in the buyer's language. No EU responsible person means the product "shall not be placed on the market". In a recall you must notify affected consumers directly and offer at least two of repair, replacement, or refund, cost-free.
Who is caught, including non-EU sellers
The regulation covers consumer products broadly: it "applies to products that are placed or made available on the market insofar as there are no specific provisions with the same objective under Union law which regulate the safety of the products concerned". The Commission's own explainer adds that it "encompasses a wider range of products, including those sold online, new, used, repaired or reconditioned".
Selling from outside the EU does not put you outside the rules. Article 4 states: "Products offered for sale online or through other means of distance sales shall be deemed to be made available on the market if the offer is targeted at consumers in the Union." Targeting is read widely, and the regulation's recitals list the tells: the "geographical areas to which dispatch is possible, the languages available, used for the offer or for ordering, means of payment, the use of currency of the Member State or a domain name registered in one of the Member States". Ship to the EU, price in euros, or offer a German checkout, and you are in scope.
The listing requirements: what every product page must show
Article 19 is the one that changed everyone's product pages. For distance sales, "the offer of those products shall clearly and visibly indicate at least the following information":
- "(a) name, registered trade name or registered trade mark of the manufacturer, as well as the postal and electronic address at which they can be contacted"
- "(b) where the manufacturer is not established in the Union, the name, postal and electronic address of the responsible person" in the EU
- "(c) information allowing the identification of the product, including a picture of it, its type and any other product identifier"
- "(d) any warning or safety information... in a language which can be easily understood by consumers, as determined by the Member State in which the product is made available"
Read that as a template for your PDP: manufacturer block, responsible-person block for imports, identifiers with a photo, warnings localized per destination country. For catalogs of any size this is a product-data problem, not a legal-drafting problem. The information has to live in your PIM or store backend per SKU and render on every listing, including marketplace listings.
The responsible person: no EU contact, no market
Article 16 is the hard gate: "A product covered by this Regulation shall not be placed on the market unless there is an economic operator established in the Union who is responsible for the tasks set out in Article 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 in respect to that product." Per the EU's official summary, that operator can be "an EU manufacturer, importer, authorised representative or a fulfilment service provider".
The duty is also physical, not just digital. Article 16(3): the responsible person's name and contact details "shall be indicated on the product or on its packaging, the parcel or an accompanying document." So the same block that appears on your listing must also travel with the parcel. Non-EU brands typically solve this with an authorised-representative service or by making their EU importer or fulfilment provider the responsible person.
Marketplaces enforce this for you, ready or not
If you sell on Amazon, eBay, Etsy or any EU-facing marketplace, GPSR arrives through the platform as well. Article 22(9) obliges marketplaces to "design and organise their online interface in a way that enables traders offering the product to provide at least the following information for each product offered and that ensures that the information is displayed", mirroring the Article 19 list. The EU's summary calls this "compliance by design": without the safety and traceability fields, "a listing cannot be published".
Marketplaces also act fast on unsafe products. On takedown orders from authorities they "shall act without undue delay, and in any event within two working days from receipt of the order". And in recalls they carry their own duty of "directly notifying all affected consumers who bought through their interfaces the relevant product" and "publishing information on product safety recalls on their online interfaces". Incomplete product data is now a listing blocker, not a footnote.
Recalls: the part that lands on your support inbox
When a recall happens, the regulation scripts your obligations toward consumers in detail.
Direct notification first. Article 35: economic operators "shall ensure that all affected consumers that can be identified are notified directly and without undue delay". This is why order data matters. An online seller can identify buyers, so a website banner alone does not discharge the duty. Where not everyone can be identified, you must also "disseminate a clear and visible recall notice or safety warning through other appropriate channels, ensuring the widest possible reach including, where available, the company's website, social media channels, newsletters and retail outlets".
A prescribed recall notice. Article 36 dictates the notice contents, starting with "a headline consisting of the words 'Product safety recall'" and "a clear description of the action consumers should take, including an instruction to immediately stop using the recalled product". It even bans minimizing language: no "avoiding any elements that may decrease consumers' perception of risk, such as by using terms and expressions such as 'voluntary', 'precautionary', 'discretionary', 'in rare situations' or 'in specific situations' or by indicating that there have been no reported accidents". The notice must include "a free phone number or interactive online service" for more information.
Remedies, consumer's choice. Article 37: "the economic operator responsible for the product safety recall shall offer the consumer an effective, cost-free and timely remedy", and specifically "the choice between at least two of the following remedies: (a) the repair of the recalled product; (b) a replacement of the recalled product with a safe one of the same type and at least the same value and quality; or (c) an adequate refund of the value of the recalled product", where the refund "shall be at least equal to the price paid". There is a backstop too: "The consumer shall always be entitled to a refund of the product when the economic operator responsible for the product safety recall has not completed the repair or replacement within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to the consumer."
Operationally a recall is a reverse-logistics event at maximum urgency: pull the buyer list for affected SKUs and batches, email every buyer, issue return labels or pickups, track the parcels home, and process replacements or refunds on a clock. Stores that already run structured returns handle this as a large campaign. Stores that run returns from an inbox meet the worst version of the problem on the worst possible day. The building blocks are the same ones covered in our guides to return management systems and refund management.
A compliance checklist for online sellers
- Audit product data. Manufacturer name, postal and email address per SKU. Responsible person details for anything made outside the EU. Product identifiers and a picture. Warnings translated per destination market.
- Close the responsible-person gap. If you import or sell non-EU goods, appoint one: importer, authorised representative, or fulfilment provider. Put their details on listings and on the product, packaging, parcel or accompanying document.
- Fix your listings everywhere. Your own store and every marketplace. Marketplaces will block incomplete listings by design, so treat their required fields as the floor.
- Prepare the recall runbook before you need it. Who pulls the affected-order list, the notification template with the mandated "Product safety recall" headline, the remedy offer with at least two options, and the returns flow that will absorb the volume.
- Keep order-to-buyer traceability. Direct notification is only possible if you can map a SKU and batch to the consumers who bought it.
This sits alongside your other EU obligations on the returns side: the EU right of withdrawal and, from June 2026, the EU withdrawal button. Compliance is converging on one theme: consumers get fast, scripted, low-friction paths to send products back, and merchants need operations that can absorb that.
Pango covers the operational half: returns management that turns a recall or withdrawal into labeled, tracked, refund-ready returns at batch scale, with carrier tracking on every parcel coming home. To see what unmanaged return flows cost you, run the returns leak calculator.
The bottom line
GPSR turned product safety from a paperwork topic into a storefront and operations topic: data on every listing, a named person inside the EU, and a scripted recall machine with consumer remedies on a clock. The sellers who struggle are the ones who treat it as a one-time legal memo instead of product data plus reverse logistics. For the reverse-logistics half, see Pango's post-purchase platform or book a demo.
