What changes this year in GPSR for your webshop?
The core of the regulation does not change this year. GPSR has applied directly in all 27 Member States since 13 December 2024, and that text does not change with the calendar year: who qualifies as a manufacturer, importer or distributor, and which obligations follow from that, is set out in the regulation itself. What does noticeably change is the practice surrounding it: marketplaces are tightening their own controls, supervisory authorities are further developing their procedures, and more and more companies are receiving questions from buyers or platforms about their documentation.
For you as an entrepreneur, this means above all that the obligations are not new, but that the likelihood of being questioned about them increases as more parties in the supply chain pay attention to them. This is not a reason for panic, but it is a reason to know where you stand before someone else asks you that question.
What does not change: your basic obligations are fixed
The role allocation under the regulation — manufacturer, importer, distributor, or EU responsible person — is not subject to annual review. Whoever sells under their own name or brand qualifies as a manufacturer; whoever merely resells without changing anything on the product or packaging carries a lighter set of obligations. This classification does not change over time, and companies that do not yet know exactly which role applies to them are not therefore running a new risk being added this year — this is an obligation that has existed since the regulation came into force. Those who have not yet worked this out can still do so; the regulation itself does not set an annual deadline for this.
The same applies to the information that must appear on a product page, the requirements for the dossier per product, and the obligation to keep documents for a number of years. These are structural obligations, not current rules being tightened this year. If you are uncertain about your own position in this classification, that can be clarified in a few questions without you needing an account.
What does noticeably change: enforcement is growing
What does shift in practice is the extent to which others in the supply chain ask for evidence. Marketplaces such as bol and Amazon have set up their own input fields and control mechanisms to be able to demonstrate that they take their own role in the supply chain seriously, and those mechanisms are being applied more strictly over time, not more leniently. A listing that went online without questions a year ago may now request additional data — not because the law has changed, but because the platform has tightened its own controls.
Member States are also continuing to develop their own market surveillance arrangements: which authority exactly supervises, how notifications are handled, and how national sanctioning regimes are structured. This is not a change to GPSR itself, but an implementation that can differ in pace from country to country. For you as an entrepreneur, the useful consequence is mainly this: a dossier that you have now put in order does not need to be rethought every year — you only need to keep it current as your product range changes.
More attention, not more rules
It is tempting to read 'more enforcement' as 'more obligations', but that is a different matter. The list of what you must be able to show — risk analysis, technical documentation, complaint registration, a procedure for a recall — was already there. What is increasing is the likelihood that someone will actually ask for it, via a marketplace, a buyer, or a supervisory authority conducting a sample check.
What does this mean for you in practice
For most SMEs, this does not mean something new needs to happen this year, but rather that deferral becomes less optional. A webshop that thought last year "I'll sort this out later" will notice this year sooner that a marketplace or business customer is actively asking for it. That shifts the question from "must I do this?" to "do I have this ready?".
That is why it makes sense not to wait until that question arises, but to know now which dossier belongs with which product and where it is stored. An overview of the topics at play — from role determination to labelling to maintaining records of complaints — you will find bundled in the knowledge base with explanations by topic.
How to maintain oversight without it costing a lawyer
You do not need to follow every year a new legislative change to keep up; the regulation itself is stable. What does help is a fixed place where you can see per product what is already locked in and what is still missing, so that a question from a marketplace or supervisor does not catch you off guard. How such a system is precisely structured and where the information comes from, you can read on the page on our methodology.
If you want to establish for yourself whether there is something concrete for your products this year, start with the free role check. It gives in a few questions an indication of your position in the chain, and refers you through to the topics that are relevant for you — even if the answer is that an obligation does not apply to you.