EU General Product Safety Regulation: A Concise Guide

Partner Sylvie Gallage-Alwis and Associate Nikita Yahouedeou examine the EU General Product Safety Regulation, which came into force on 13 December 2024, and how it redefined the role of online marketplaces in monitoring product safety and clarified their legal status.

Sylvie and Nikita’s article was originally published in Option Droit & Affaires, 11 February 2026, and can be found here.

Regulation (EU) 2023/988 relating to general product safety (GPSR) imposes new vigilance and traceability obligations on marketplaces. The guidelines published by the Commission in November 2025 specify their scope, establishing platforms as central players in product compliance in the EU. They must now adapt their interfaces to strengthen product security, while integrating emerging risks such as mental health or cybersecurity.

The status of online marketplaces under GPSR

The GPSR, which came into force on December 13, 2024, redefined the role of online marketplaces in monitoring product safety and clarified their legal status. In this regard, the GPSR complements and specifies the obligations already provided for in the Digital Services Regulations (DSA) in relation to product security.

Marketplaces are defined as intermediary service providers using an online interface that allows consumers to enter into distance contracts with professionals for the sale of products.

The qualification of a marketplace can vary depending on the services it offers for a given product. A marketplace can thus be considered a manufacturer or importer if it affixes its own brand to a product or if it makes a substantial modification to the item, for example, requiring it to assume the responsibilities incumbent on these economic operators.

Marketplaces must therefore be attentive to the extent of their compliance obligations, which will vary depending on the importance of the role they play before listing the product on their platform.

In addition, national supervisory authorities, such as the DGCCRF in France, now have increased powers to require marketplaces to immediately remove products deemed dangerous, under penalty of financial sanctions that each Member State remains free to define.

A design of marketplace interfaces ensuring traceability and compliance

One of the most significant impacts of GPSR on marketplaces concerns the very design of their sales interfaces, which must now integrate mechanisms for collecting and displaying traceability information.

Indeed, the GPSR provides that no product may be placed on the EU market if there is not an economic operator established in the EU acting as responsible person. This requires marketplaces to configure their platforms to allow third-party sellers to necessarily provide the name and contact details of this responsible person, as well as information relating to the manufacturer. This requirement aims to end the practice of sellers located outside of Europe selling through marketplaces without any legal representation in the EU.

Furthermore, the interface must clearly and visibly display an image of the product, its type or any other identifier, as well as the necessary safety warnings in a language easily understandable by the consumer. The November 2025 guidelines specify that this information cannot be provided by a simple hyperlink, but must be directly accessible before the conclusion of the transaction.

Finally, platforms must implement self-certification systems allowing third-party sellers to certify that they only offer products that comply with EU security rules.

The conceptual broadening of security to intangible risks

The Commission’s guidelines shed new light on the definition of a safe product, which now includes intangible and technological dimensions which directly impact the obligations of marketplaces in monitoring their platform.

Product safety is no longer assessed solely in relation to physical risks, but also includes the mental health of consumers.

The design of a product (or its foreseeable use) must not create risks for the cognitive faculties of the consumer or cause anxiety or depression. This development is crucial for connected products and software which may fall under the GPSR depending on their use and characteristics. For connected products, substantial software updates may, by modifying the characteristics of the product, lead to the appearance of new risks that did not exist before the update. Marketplaces must therefore remain vigilant regarding the characteristics of the articles they list with regard to these new risks.

Operational risk management and reinforced obligations depending on the scale of the platform

The GPSR establishes additional responsibilities proportionate to the scale of the platforms, adding to the obligations incumbent on all marketplaces, reinforced requirements weighing on very large platforms within the meaning of the DSA (i.e. platforms which have more than 45 million users per month in the EU, called “VLOPs”).

Among these VLOPs, we include, for example, AliExpress, Amazon or Shein according to the European Commission website. If the obligation to process withdrawal orders from authorities within two working days and reports from third parties within three working days is imposed on all marketplaces, only the largest marketplaces must carry out random ex post checks of products referenced via the Safety Gate portal.

These same major players are forced to suspend services to repeat offender merchants frequently offering products considered dangerous and to technically structure their interfaces to make the display of product traceability data compulsory.

However, cooperation in the event of a recall remains a common foundation for all marketplaces: each platform must directly notify the affected consumers whose data it holds and provide all information relating to the recall and its implementation.

Finally, marketplaces of all sizes must cooperate with third-party sellers and supervisory authorities whenever an accident (injury or death, for example) is reported to them regarding a product on the platform.

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The GPSR therefore gives marketplaces a much more active role in product safety. Under the watchful eye of supervisory authorities, these platforms will be subject to reinforced controls and sanctions in the event of non-compliance. Actions which, as we have already seen, should be widely publicized. Marketplaces will therefore have to learn lessons from sanctions imposed in the past to adapt their current models.