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GPSR 2023/988 and CE marking

Last reviewed: August 2026 · Legal status verified against EUR-Lex.

Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety — the GPSR — has applied since 13 December 2024, replacing the General Product Safety Directive 2001/95/EC and the food-imitating products Directive 87/357/EEC. It is the horizontal safety law for consumer products in the EU. It is frequently discussed alongside CE marking, and frequently misunderstood in the process: the GPSR provides for no CE marking at all. This page explains what the regulation covers, how it relates to the harmonisation legislation that does require CE marking, and which of its obligations apply even to products that already carry the mark.

From directive to regulation

The GPSD of 2001 was a directive, transposed with variations into 27 national laws, and written before e-commerce, online marketplaces, and direct-to-consumer imports became the dominant route by which unsafe products reach EU consumers. The GPSR is a regulation — directly applicable, identical in every Member State — and was drafted specifically to close the enforcement gaps of distance selling. It applies to products placed on the market from 13 December 2024; there is no CE-style transition mechanism, because there is no conformity assessment procedure to transition.

Scope: the safety net

The GPSR applies to products intended for consumers, or reasonably foreseeably used by consumers, that are placed or made available on the EU market — whether new, used, repaired or reconditioned. Certain categories with their own complete regimes are excluded, among them medicinal products, food and feed, living plants and animals, aircraft, and antiques.

Its defining structural feature is the safety-net function. For products covered by Union harmonisation legislation — the CE marking acts described in what is CE marking? — the GPSR applies only to the aspects and risks that the sectoral act does not cover. The general safety requirement of the GPSR does not apply to risks already governed by, say, the Low Voltage Directive or the Toy Safety Regulation. But where the sectoral act is silent — typically on traceability details, recall handling, online-sale information, or marketplace duties — the GPSR's provisions step in. For consumer products covered by no harmonisation act at all (furniture, kitchenware, childcare articles outside the toy definition, most textiles), the GPSR is the primary applicable law.

No CE marking under the GPSR. The regulation contains no conformity assessment procedure, no Declaration of Conformity, no notified-body involvement, and no marking requirement. Affixing CE marking to a product solely because "it complies with the GPSR" is an error — and an infringement of Article 30 of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, since the mark may only be affixed where Union harmonisation legislation specifically provides for it. If your product's only applicable EU law is the GPSR, it must not carry CE marking. Start from does my product need CE marking? to establish which situation you are in.

The general safety requirement

Economic operators may place or make available on the market only safe products. Safety is assessed against criteria including the product's characteristics, its effect on other products it is used with, labelling and warnings, the categories of consumers at risk (particularly children), appearance likely to mislead, and — new in the GPSR — cybersecurity features relevant to safety and evolving, learning or predictive functionalities. Compliance with European standards whose references are published in the Official Journal under the GPSR gives a presumption of safety for the risks the standard covers, mirroring the role of harmonised standards in the CE system without adopting its marking machinery.

Where no relevant standard exists, safety is assessed against elements such as Commission guidance, product safety recalls history, state of the art, and reasonable consumer expectations. Manufacturers of non-harmonised consumer products are expected to carry out an internal risk analysis and produce technical documentation adequate to demonstrate safety — lighter than CE technical documentation, but a genuine documentation duty nonetheless.

The responsible person requirement

Article 16 of the GPSR extends the logic of Article 4 of the Market Surveillance Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 to all consumer products: a product within scope may be placed on the market only if there is an economic operator established in the Union who is responsible for it. That operator is, in order: the manufacturer if established in the EU; otherwise an importer; otherwise an authorised representative with a written mandate; otherwise a fulfilment service provider established in the Union. The responsible operator's name and contact details must appear on the product or its packaging, parcel or accompanying document.

This is the provision with the largest practical impact on non-EU sellers. A seller outside the EU shipping directly to consumers with no EU responsible person cannot lawfully place products on the market, and online marketplaces are required to obtain and display the responsible person's details before listings go live. The interaction with harmonised products is seamless: for CE-marked categories, MSR Article 4 already imposed the same requirement since July 2021; GPSR Article 16 closes the gap for everything else. See CE marking and e-commerce and importing from outside the EU.

Traceability

Manufacturers must indicate their name, registered trade name or trade mark, postal and electronic address, and a type, batch or serial number or other element allowing identification of the product. Importers add their own identification. Economic operators must be able to identify their upstream supplier and, where applicable, downstream business recipients, and keep that information available for market surveillance authorities. These duties mirror the traceability provisions of the CE acts (compare manufacturer obligations and distributor obligations); for harmonised products the sectoral wording prevails, and the GPSR fills in where it is absent.

Distance selling: information in the listing

Article 19 sets minimum information for products offered online or by other distance sales: the listing must clearly identify the manufacturer (name, address, electronic address), the responsible person in the EU where the manufacturer is outside it, product identification information including an image, and any warnings or safety information in the languages of the targeted Member State. In practical terms, safety-relevant content that traditionally lived on the packaging must now appear in the online listing before purchase. For CE-marked products this applies alongside the sectoral labelling rules — the listing requirement comes from the GPSR because most CE acts predate any notion of an online offer.

Accidents and the Safety Business Gateway

Manufacturers must report, without undue delay, accidents caused by their products that result in death or in serious adverse effects on health or safety, through the Commission's Safety Business Gateway — the online interface economic operators also use for recall notifications and communication with authorities. Importers and distributors aware of such accidents must inform the manufacturer, which retains the reporting duty. This is a genuinely new obligation relative to the GPSD era and applies to CE-marked consumer products as well, except where a sectoral act imposes an equivalent reporting regime (vigilance under the Medical Devices Regulation being the clearest example).

Recalls

The GPSR standardised the recall notice. A recall must be communicated through a written notice with prescribed content and layout: headed "Product safety recall", identifying the product and the risk in plain language, avoiding risk-minimising phrases such as "voluntary" or "in rare cases", and stating what consumers should do. Consumers subject to a recall must be offered at least two of repair, replacement, or an adequate refund, at the operator's expense. Where operators have customer contact details (registrations, loyalty schemes, online order data), they must notify affected consumers directly. Recalls of CE-marked consumer products follow these GPSR rules wherever the sectoral act does not prescribe its own procedure — which most do not; the CE acts require corrective action but say little about how a recall is communicated.

Online marketplaces

The GPSR imposes direct obligations on providers of online marketplaces for the first time: registration with the Safety Gate portal, a single contact point for authorities and consumers, processing of removal orders for dangerous-product listings within two working days, random checks against Safety Gate, information duties towards consumers who bought a recalled product through the platform, and design of the interface so that sellers can and must display responsible-person and warning information. Marketplaces are not made responsible for product conformity itself — the economic-operator chain of manufacturer, importer and distributor is untouched — but a listing that lacks the mandatory information can no longer be lawfully offered.

Enforcement and penalties

Enforcement runs through the same market surveillance machinery as the CE acts, described in market surveillance: national authorities, the Safety Gate rapid alert system (the successor to RAPEX), and coordinated enforcement actions. Penalties are set nationally; the GPSR requires them to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive but, unlike some recent EU legislation, sets no harmonised maximum. See penalties for non-compliance.

Checklist: what the GPSR adds for a CE-marked consumer product

Sources

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