Why was my product removed from the marketplace?

Marketplaces remove listings as a matter of their own obligation

A listing usually disappears because the marketplace itself is required to respond to a safety signal, not because a regulatory authority has already intervened. Operators of online marketplaces must assess under the GPSR whether a product carries the required information and must exclude dangerous products as soon as they become aware of them — through a notification from a regulatory authority, through the Safety Gate system, or through their own signals. In the Netherlands, the NVWA monitors this together with the ACM, and in practice a seller becomes aware of the marketplace action before the regulatory authority does: the marketplace must remove dangerous products within two working days and passes this requirement on to its own sellers.

Another equally common reason is that there is no traceable EU responsible party attached to the product: no EU manufacturer, no importer, no authorized representative and no fulfillment service provider that can be identified as such. Marketplaces exclude or remove listings without such identification, regardless of whether the product itself is unsafe. This directly affects the role: whoever sells a product under their own name or brand — even a purchased product with only their own logo on it — is considered a manufacturer themselves and bears the corresponding documentation obligation. A distributor who only resells does not need to draw up that documentation themselves, but must be able to demonstrate that someone else in the supply chain does.

This obligation follows from Article 22 GPSR

Article 22 of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 imposes obligations on operators of online marketplaces regarding product safety, including responding to signals about dangerous products and excluding offerings without an identifiable responsible market participant. In the Netherlands, the ACM, alongside the NVWA, monitors this for online marketplaces.