What is the GPSR and which products does it apply to?

The GPSR applies to virtually all consumer products

The GPSR — Regulation (EU) 2023/988 — is the European product safety regulation that has applied directly in all twenty-seven Member States since 13 December 2024, to virtually all non-food products placed on the market to consumers. It covers products for which no specific EU product legislation with its own safety requirements exists; if a product does fall under such legislation — think of toys or machinery with their own directive — then that specific legislation takes precedence in the first place, and the GPSR supplements it where that legislation is silent. Because it is a regulation and not a directive, there is no national transposition: the obligation itself is identical in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the rest of the Union.

What is exactly required of a market participant depends not on the product but on the role that party plays in the chain. The regulation distinguishes between the manufacturer, the importer, the distributor, the authorised representative and the fulfilment service provider, and each role carries different obligations. A distributor — a party who resells a finished product without making any changes to it — bears lighter obligations than a manufacturer and for example does not need to draw up technical documentation. This changes as soon as a webshop sells the product under its own name or brand: that same webshop then qualifies as a manufacturer, even if nothing else has been changed to the product than the label or a logo, and even if the product was sourced elsewhere and is only repackaged.

This follows from Articles 1 and 2 of the regulation

The scope and the roles involved are set out in Articles 1 and 2 of Regulation (EU) 2023/988, which can be consulted via EUR-Lex. The NVWA provides an accessible explanation on its product safety page of what the GPSR means for Dutch businesses.