At Xtensive Web Design & Marketing, we help businesses build fully-compliant eCommerce websites.
Part of our commitment to you as a client is to keep you informed of any regulatory changes that could affect your business. And with that, there is new legislation coming into effect on the 13th December 2024 that you need to be aware of – The General Product Safety Regulation or GPSR for short.
Do you manufacture and sell products to the EU or Northern Ireland?
If so, this legislation will affect you. In short, the main problem with this regulation is that it requires the manufacturer to have a responsible person/compliance agent to be based in the EU or Northern Ireland for the products that they make and sell to the European Union or Northern Ireland. This person is needed for goods which are manufactured outside the EU/NI to be an official point of contact for product safety and compliance issues.
Products will also now require clear identification marks and comprehensive safety documentation. Risk assessments and safety records are required to be retained for 10 years. There are also more strict rules for reporting serious safety incidents and conducting standardised recalls. For the full breakdown on everything that you need to do to adhere to this new legislation, please read this article on the European Commission website.
If you sell products that you don’t make then you may be thinking ‘phew this doesn’t apply to me’ but this new legislation affects sellers too. If you sell any products into the EU or Northern Ireland then you need to provide relevant contact information of the manufacturer or responsible person within the EU along any necessary warning & safety information. This must be provided in the language of the country that you are sending your product to e.g. an order to Germany must provide all contact, safety and warning information in German.
The General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) takes effect from December 13th 2024 and non-compliance comes with hefty fines. We are pretty sure that the regulators will be looking to set some examples early in the process so please don’t be one of them and get yourself up to speed with this new legislation.
If you currently sell to the EU or Northern Ireland and decide that you want to stop doing so for the time being, please let us know and we can disable shipping to these markets.
