In short
- The regulation has applied since 13 December 2024, directly, with no national transposition. There was no French version to wait for.
- This is not a project reserved for new lines. A transitional provision allows products that complied with the old directive and were placed on the market before 13 December 2024 to continue being made available. It protects units already placed on the market, not the reference: as soon as you restock, the regulation applies.
- The information must be clear and visible in the offer. On a marketplace, the regulation requires it to be displayed or easily accessible where the product is listed. A discreet link to a manual does not meet that condition.
- You need a responsible person established in the Union. For a brand importing from outside the EU, or selling from outside it, this is the leading reason listings get blocked on marketplaces.
The subject reached most brands from the wrong end: a message from a marketplace announcing that listings were about to be suspended. That is a shame, because the underlying work is straightforward and it produces a useful side effect, which we come back to at the end.
What the regulation asks for
The European general product safety regulation, applicable since 13 December 2024, replaces an older framework and puts every actor in the chain on the same footing, marketplaces included, which were largely absent from the previous one.
For an online seller, the offer must clearly and visibly state at least the following. The regulation sets a minimum, not a closed list.
| Element | What it means in practice | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| Product identification | Type, batch or serial number, and an image that allows identification | Internal references are not enough if they appear nowhere on the product |
| Manufacturer identity | Name, postal address, email address | An address outside the Union requires designating a responsible person inside it |
| Responsible person in the Union | Full contact details of an entity established in the Union | The point that blocks most listings, and it is settled by contract, not by code |
| Warnings and safety information | In the language of the country of sale, legible on the listing | Translate market by market, not once and for all in English |
The mistake that costs the most Putting the information in a downloadable document and placing a link on the listing. The requirement covers information displayed in the listing itself. A pointer to a manual is not enough, and it is the most frequent rejection reason in marketplaces’ automated checks.
The point that decides the size of the project
A grandfathering clause does exist, but it is narrower than it looks. It covers products that complied with the old directive and were placed on the market before 13 December 2024, and it attaches to those units, not to the reference or to the age of the listing. On a live catalogue, where references get restocked, the project does indeed cover what already exists.
That changes the nature of the work entirely. It is not a new field to fill in for the next references, it is a rework of what exists, reference by reference, with data that often sits with the supplier rather than with you. On a catalogue of several thousand products sourced from a dozen suppliers, it is a project of several weeks whose bulk is a negotiation, not an integration.
Why marketplaces are in the front line
The regulation requires them to let sellers provide this information and to display it to buyers. The regulation requires them to design their interface so the seller can supply this information and the buyer can see it, and it lets authorities order them to remove an offer, block access to it or display a warning. That is what explains how blunt the enforcement is.
A practical consequence many discover late: each marketplace has implemented these fields its own way, with its own names, its own formats and its own checking schedule. Clean data on your side still has to be mapped to each of them. It is exactly the mechanic we describe in our article on opening a marketplace without losing your margin, and one more reason to hold your own connections rather than delegate them to a provider who publishes on your behalf.
The method, in the order it gets done
- Settle the responsible person first. It is a decision, not a task: either your manufacturer has an entity in the Union, or you are one yourself as importer, or you appoint a third party. Until that is settled, the rest is pointless.
- Count what is missing before collecting. Export your catalogue and count the references with no usable manufacturer identity. The figure sizes the project, and it is almost always higher than expected.
- Chase the supplier, not the developer. Most of the missing data sits with your suppliers. A template letter per supplier, with the list of their affected references, moves faster than any development.
- Structure before you map. Store this information in proper fields in your shop rather than in the description. Data in a field maps to each marketplace; data buried in text has to be re-entered every time. The same fields work for you in search as well, since concrete, verifiable characteristics are what engines and assistants extract from a listing, where a supplier paragraph gives them nothing to hold on to.
One-hour self-check: take thirty references at random and see whether you can answer the four rows in the table above for each. If you stumble on more than five, the project is one of collection, not of technology.
The options, and what they are worth
| Option | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated fields in the shop | The data exists once and feeds the site, the marketplaces and the feeds. The only approach that holds at scale | Catalogues above a few hundred references |
| Everything in the description | Fast on fifty products, unmanageable afterwards. The data is neither extractable nor properly translatable | Very small catalogue, and as a transition |
| Typing directly into each marketplace | Works at first, then drifts. Listings end up saying different things by channel | No case beyond one marketplace |
| Waiting for the check | The check takes the form of suspended listings, usually at the worst moment of the season | No case at all |
Tooling
The work splits in two: obtaining the data, which is a supplier matter, and carrying it cleanly onto listings and feeds, which is a tooling matter.
On PrestaShop we deploy the module published by Datafirefly Limited, our agency’s sister company: GPSR Compliance adds the expected fields, displays them on the listing and exports them to feeds. One-off purchase · 12 months of updates. For brands anticipating the ecodesign rules that follow, the digital product passport follows the same structured-data logic.
Method beats tooling, and the proportion here is brutal: the module puts the fields in place in an hour, and filling them takes weeks. The collection is the project.
What this says more broadly
A compliance constraint forces you to do what commerce alone had never made urgent: knowing precisely what you sell, who makes it and where.
Brands that did this work seriously get a benefit that has nothing regulatory about it. A catalogue whose manufacturers, materials and origins are documented can be filtered, translated, exported and told as a story. It is the raw material you later lack to open a market or answer a demanding buyer, and it is the whole point of our e-commerce and marketplaces practice. Same logic as the inventory the AI Act imposes: the constraint funds an inventory nobody would have budgeted.
Sources
The verifiable claims in this article link to their primary source, opened on 11 August 2026. We do not cite a source we have not read.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 on general product safety, Articles 16, 19, 21, 22, 51 and 52. Consulter
FAQ
Are my pre-December 2024 listings in scope?
Largely yes, but not because there is no grandfathering clause. The regulation allows products that complied with the old directive and were placed on the market before 13 December 2024 to continue being sold. That allowance attaches to units already placed on the market, not to the age of the listing: any restock of an older reference falls under the regulation. That is what makes the project large.
Can I put the information in a downloadable PDF?
No. The information must be provided in the listing itself, not only through a link. It is the most common rejection reason in marketplaces’ automated checks.
Who is the responsible person if I manufacture outside the Union?
You need an entity established in the Union: your importer, your own European subsidiary, or an authorised representative appointed by contract. Without one, the product cannot be placed on the Union market, and marketplaces block the listing.
Do warnings have to be translated into every language?
Yes, into the language of the country where the product is sold. One more reason to store these statements in translatable fields rather than in a free-text description.
Can Dotsland help?
Yes. Counting what is missing across your catalogue, collection letters to your suppliers, structuring the fields in your shop and mapping to each marketplace. It is part of our e-commerce and marketplaces practice. Let’s talk, or start with the thirty references in the self-check.