Is GPSR Mandatory? Yes, and Here's Exactly Why

Short answer: yes. GPSR, the EU's General Product Safety Regulation (Regulation 2023/988), is mandatory. It is not a recommendation, not a best practice, and not something you opt into when your volume gets big enough. If you place or make consumer products available on the EU market, the rules apply to you.

The regulation came into full force on December 13, 2024. One seller summed up the mood right after that date: "The new General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) has been implemented in December 13 2024, but it's only slowly being enforced." Slow enforcement is not the same as optional. The obligation exists the moment your product is available to an EU buyer.

This article walks through who it binds, what "mandatory" actually requires you to do, and the few situations where the answer gets murky.

Who GPSR is mandatory for

GPSR applies to every economic operator in the supply chain. That word covers more than you might expect: manufacturers, importers, distributors, and the online marketplaces that host your listings. If you are a non-EU seller shipping into the bloc, you are almost always treated as the manufacturer or importer for these purposes.

There is no size threshold. A solo Etsy shop and a multinational brand are held to the same standard. As one forum poster put it after reading the text: "Basically, under this regulation everyone that sells to Europe has to have a legal representative in Europe, for 'customer protection'. This also applies for selling used, old, repaired items, gifts etc, there seem to be no exemption."

That last point trips people up constantly, so it's worth being blunt about it.

No small-business exemption

Plenty of EU rules carve out micro-enterprises or hobbyists. GPSR does not. The regulation defines obligations by what you do (place a product on the market) rather than how much you earn doing it. If you are running a small business or a side hustle, you are in scope. The frustration is real, and sellers have voiced it directly: regulations like this "disproportionately burden small businesses while potentially being weakly enforced." Understandable. It does not change the legal position.

Used and second-hand goods are covered

A common assumption is that selling pre-owned items keeps you clear of the rules. It does not. The scope reads broadly: "The GPSR covers all consumer goods placed on the EU and Northern Ireland (NI) markets, including CE marked goods. This also includes any secondhand products or products that are repaired, reconditioned, or recycled." If you want the detail, we cover the specifics in our guide to GPSR and used or second-hand goods.

What "mandatory" actually requires you to do

Saying GPSR is mandatory is only half the story. The more useful question is what it forces you to produce. Here is the short list for a typical non-EU seller.

A Responsible Person inside the EU. This is the requirement that sends most sellers into a panic. Every non-EU manufacturer must name an EU-based Responsible Person who holds your technical file and talks to regulators on your behalf. Their name and address go on the product or its packaging. A print-on-demand seller learned this the hard way when their supplier said the quiet part out loud: "Even though Printful has a presence in the EU, we don't automatically act as the EU point of contact for your brand." Your fulfillment partner being in Europe does not make them your Responsible Person. To be clear, EUProof generates the compliance documents you need; we do not act as your Responsible Person.

A risk assessment. Before a product goes on sale, you have to identify what could go wrong with it and document how you addressed those hazards. Our GPSR risk assessment guide breaks down what that file looks like in practice.

Technical documentation, kept for 10 years. Manufacturers and importers must prepare technical documentation and keep those records for at least 10 years after the product is placed on the market. You can build this with a technical documentation template.

Contact details on the listing. Authorities and consumers need a way to reach someone responsible. As one seller noted, "You'll need to enter your own contact information for your products for communication with authorities and consumers." Another, reading the text closely, pointed to "Section 2, Article 19, point a" and concluded the listing itself "should include the manufacturer's details." That is the labeling requirement in plain terms.

If you want to see whether all of this applies to your specific situation, run the Am I Affected check. It takes about a minute.

The marketplaces enforce it whether or not governments do

Here is the part sellers underestimate. Even if a national authority never knocks on your door, the platform you sell on is legally required to police GPSR. Online marketplaces are obligated to enforce the regulation, which means Amazon, Etsy, and eBay can restrict or remove the listings of sellers who do not comply.

So the realistic enforcement order is: the platform suspends your listing first, long before any government fine arrives. That is why "it's only slowly being enforced" is cold comfort. Slow government enforcement and fast platform enforcement can coexist, and for most online sellers it is the platform that decides whether you keep selling next week.

Can you just stop selling to the EU?

Yes. This is the one clean way out, and a lot of sellers have taken it. After December 13, some simply switched off EU and Northern Ireland shipping rather than set up a Responsible Person and a technical file. One US-based seller put the dilemma plainly: "It seems unless we have a physical presence within the EU/NI, presumably we can no longer sell there past Dec 13."

Walking away from the market is a legitimate choice. It is also a real cost, since the EU is one of the largest consumer markets on the planet. If the math works for you, opting out is allowed in a way that "ignoring the rules while still selling" is not. We go deeper on that trade-off in can I sell to the EU without GPSR compliance.

The genuinely gray areas

Not everything is settled. Two questions keep coming up on forums without a crisp answer.

Free items and gifts. GPSR's definition of "making available on the market" is broad, and it does not explicitly exempt products given away for free. Whether a promotional freebie or a gift falls in scope is something sellers are actively debating, with no clear official ruling yet.

Proving pre-December-13 market presence. Some sellers continued EU sales after the deadline partly to "test enforcement by continuing EU sales to observe outcomes," and there is "no clear official guidance on proving pre-December 13 market presence." If you had stock already in the EU before the date, the documentation expectations are still being worked out in practice.

When something is genuinely unclear, the safe move is to assume you are in scope and document accordingly, not to assume the gap protects you.

So what should you actually do?

If you sell consumer goods to EU buyers and you intend to keep doing so, treat GPSR as a fixed cost of access. Name a Responsible Person, run a risk assessment, build the technical file, and get your contact details onto the listing. None of these are optional, and none of them go away by waiting.

EUProof generates the GPSR documents that satisfy these obligations: the Declaration of Conformity, the risk assessment, and the technical file your Responsible Person needs to hold. You can see what we generate or start free. For the full picture of the regulation, start with what is GPSR.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with a qualified advisor or your Responsible Person.