How the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) Impacts Shopify, WooCommerce, and Amazon Sellers
The General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), Regulation (EU) 2023/988, has applied to every consumer product sold in the EU since 13 December 2024. For online sellers it changed two things in particular: what has to appear on the product, and what has to appear on the listing. Nearly two years on, most of the compliance problems we see on Shopify, WooCommerce and Amazon come down to one of those two.
This guide explains what GPSR asks of online sellers, how the rules land differently on your own store and on a marketplace, and what to do about it.
What is the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR)?
The General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) is an EU-wide regulation designed to improve product safety for consumers. It applies to products that are not covered by sector-specific legislation (e.g., toys, medical devices). The GPSR introduces stricter rules for online marketplaces, fulfillment service providers, and sellers GPSR replaced the General Product Safety Directive of 2001. It is the EU’s safety net for consumer products. Where a product has its own sector legislation, such as the Toy Safety Directive or the Low Voltage Directive, GPSR fills in the gaps: the Responsible Person requirement, online listing information, accident reporting and recall rules apply to those products too. Where a product has no sector legislation, such as furniture, kitchenware, textiles or phone cases, GPSR is the main safety law.
GPSR does not require CE marking or a Declaration of Conformity. Those belong to sector legislation. What GPSR requires is that the product is safe, that someone in the EU is responsible for it, that it can be traced, and that buyers can see who made it before they order.
The six obligations that matter for online sellers
1. An EU Responsible Person
Every product placed on the EU market must have a responsible economic operator established in the EU (Article 16). In order, that is the manufacturer if based in the EU, an authorised representative appointed by written mandate, the importer, or, if none of those exists, the fulfilment service provider.
For a non-EU brand selling direct to consumers, this usually means appointing an authorised representative to act as Responsible Person. For a seller buying from an EU importer, the importer already fills the role. For an FBA seller shipping stock from outside the EU with no other EU operator, Amazon’s fulfilment arm would technically be the Responsible Person, which is why Amazon requires sellers to name one themselves.
2. Traceability details on the product
Article 9 requires the manufacturer to put on the product, or where that is not possible on the packaging, parcel or an accompanying document: a type, batch or serial number; the manufacturer’s name or trademark, postal address and an electronic address such as an email or contact form. If the manufacturer is outside the EU, the Responsible Person’s name, postal address and electronic address must appear as well (Article 16). A QR code alone does not satisfy this; the information must be physically present.
Country of origin marking is not a GPSR requirement. “Made in China” on a label does not help with GPSR and its absence is not a GPSR breach.
3. The same details on every online listing
Article 19 is the provision that catches most store owners out. Any offer to EU consumers online must clearly show: the manufacturer’s name, postal address and electronic address; the Responsible Person’s name, postal address and electronic address where the manufacturer is outside the EU; information identifying the product, including a picture, its type and any other identifier; and any warnings or safety information that appear on the product or packaging, in a language the consumer understands.
This applies to your own Shopify or WooCommerce store exactly as it applies to Amazon. It is not a marketplace rule.
4. Technical documentation and a risk analysis
Manufacturers must draw up technical documentation before placing a product on the market (Article 9(2)): a general description of the product, its essential characteristics relevant to safety, and an internal analysis of possible risks and the measures taken to address them. Where standards or test reports exist, reference them. Keep the file for ten years and be ready to hand it to authorities. If you sell under your own brand, this is your job, not your factory’s.
5. A way for consumers to reach you, and a duty to report accidents
Manufacturers must give consumers a public channel to complain and to report accidents (Article 9(7)). If a product causes an accident, the manufacturer must report it through the Commission’s Safety Business Gateway without undue delay and inform the Responsible Person and distributors (Article 20). Keep a register of complaints.
6. Recalls done properly
If a recall is needed, GPSR sets a mandatory format for the recall notice (Article 36) and requires you to contact known purchasers directly, which for online sellers means using your order records. Consumers must be offered a repair, replacement or refund.
Shopify and WooCommerce stores
Who this affects. Independent brands selling physical products direct to EU consumers, including UK and US stores that ship to the EU, and dropshippers using non-EU suppliers.
The gap most stores have. The listing. Shopify has no native GPSR field, so the Article 19 information has to be added through product metafields, a block in the product description, or one of the GPSR apps in the Shopify App Store that adds a manufacturer and Responsible Person section to every product page. WooCommerce works the same way through custom fields or a GPSR plugin. Whichever route you use, the information has to be on the product page itself, not buried in a policy page.
The product itself. Check that every product or its packaging carries the Article 9 details and, for non-EU brands, the Responsible Person details. For stock already produced, a label or an insert in the parcel is acceptable.
Dropshipping. If your supplier ships directly to the customer from outside the EU and you sell under your own brand, you are the manufacturer for GPSR purposes and you need a Responsible Person. If you sell the supplier’s brand, the supplier is the manufacturer, but you still need a Responsible Person in the chain and you still need the listing information. In practice most dropshippers cannot get compliant labelling from their suppliers, which is why the model has become hard to run into the EU.
Payment and shipping apps do not cover this. Compliance here is about labels and product page content, not checkout.
Amazon sellers
Who this affects. Anyone listing on Amazon’s EU marketplaces, whether FBA or FBM, including private label brands, resellers and KDP authors with physical books.
What Amazon requires. Amazon built GPSR into Seller Central under Compliance information. For each ASIN sold in the EU you must provide manufacturer contact details (name, address, email), EU Responsible Person details, product safety attestations, and any warnings and safety pictograms in the relevant language. Amazon displays this on the product detail page to meet Article 19. Listings without the information are suppressed for EU marketplaces, and Amazon periodically asks for supporting documents such as test reports or, for CE products, the Declaration of Conformity.
What GPSR itself asks of Amazon. Article 22 requires online marketplaces to register on the Safety Gate Portal, name a single contact point for authorities and one for consumers, have internal processes for handling product safety, act on an authority’s takedown order within two working days, remove listings of products notified as dangerous, and inform buyers when a recall is ordered. GPSR does not require Amazon to check every listing before it goes live. The document requests are Amazon’s own policy, built on top of GPSR and the Digital Services Act.
FBA. Because a fulfilment service provider can be the Responsible Person when no other EU operator exists, Amazon insists on sellers naming their own Responsible Person rather than defaulting into the role. Expect this to be enforced at listing level.
Products with sector legislation
If your product is a toy, electrical item, radio device, PPE, cosmetic or another CE marked category, the sector rules come first: CE marking, harmonised standards, a Declaration of Conformity and, for most of these, an EU authorised representative under Regulation 2019/1020. GPSR then adds the online listing information, the accident reporting duty and the recall rules. Do not treat GPSR compliance as a substitute for CE compliance, and do not assume CE compliance covers your listing.
UK sellers
Great Britain has not adopted GPSR. Products sold in England, Scotland and Wales remain under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, which require safe products and traceability but not the GPSR labelling or listing formats.
Northern Ireland is different. Under the Windsor Framework, EU GPSR applies to goods placed on the market in Northern Ireland. A GB store shipping to NI customers, or listing on Amazon.co.uk with NI delivery, therefore needs an EU Responsible Person and the GPSR listing information for those sales. The Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025 gives the UK Government powers to update GB rules, so this may change.
A short compliance routine
For each product line: identify who the manufacturer is in law (if it carries your brand, it is you). Confirm there is an EU Responsible Person and get their details onto the product and packaging. Add the Article 19 information to every product page and every marketplace listing. Write the risk analysis and keep it with any test reports. Set up a complaints channel and a process for reporting accidents. For CE products, do all of the above on top of the CE technical file, not instead of it.
How Euverify helps
Euverify acts as EU Responsible Person and authorised representative for non-EU sellers, so the address on your products, your Shopify or WooCommerce pages and your Amazon listings all point to the same place. The platform provides risk assessment and technical documentation templates for several products, stores the file for each product, and generates the label and listing text in the format Article 9 and Article 19 require. For CE products, the EU Declaration Generator and UKCA Doc Generator cover the Declaration of Conformity side.
If you are not sure whether your store or your listings meet the GPSR requirements, send us a product link and we will tell you what is missing.
