EdLaw
General Product Safety Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/988)
The EU's horizontal safety-net for consumer products, published in the Official Journal on 23 May 2023 (OJ L 135, 23.5.2023, p. 1) and applying from 13 December 2024 (Art. 52), repealing the General Product Safety Directive 2001/95/EC (Art. 50); products conformly placed on the market before that date stay marketable (Art. 51). It imposes a general safety requirement on all consumer products (Art. 5) for aspects not covered by sector CE legislation, and adds obligations built for online commerce: distance-sales listing duties, online-marketplace duties, and a modernised recall regime. This folder reproduces the consolidated text 02023R0988-20260529 (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/2748, which inserted the emergency-framework Articles 8a–8c).
Applicability to EdTech
- Hardware sold where CE sector law doesn't reach. For a headset, RED/RoHS cover their own aspects; the GPSR's general safety requirement covers the rest and any product with no sector instrument. The Article 6 safety-assessment aspects explicitly include "the effect on other products, where it is reasonably foreseeable that the product will be used with other products, including the interconnection of those products" (Art. 6(1)(b)), "the evolving, learning and predictive functionalities of the product" (Art. 6(1)(h)) and "the appropriate cybersecurity features necessary to protect the product against external influences" (Art. 6(1)(g)), both "when required by the nature of the product" — connected classroom devices are squarely in the frame.
- Selling online triggers Article 19: the online offer must identify the manufacturer (name, address, electronic contact), identify the product (picture, type) and carry warnings/safety information (Art. 19).
- Recalls have a mandatory shape: direct notification of all identifiable affected consumers (Art. 35), a recall notice per the Commission template (Art. 36), and the consumer's choice of at least two of repair/replacement/refund (Art. 37) — registered-device telemetry makes "identifiable consumers" a long list.
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| SCOPE-AND-DEFINITIONS.md | Arts. 1–3 — scope, relationship with sector law, definitions |
| SAFETY-REQUIREMENT.md | Arts. 5–8 — the general safety requirement, assessment aspects, presumptions |
| OPERATOR-OBLIGATIONS.md | Arts. 9, 11, 12, 19 — manufacturer/importer/distributor and distance-sales duties |
| RECALLS-AND-PENALTIES.md | Arts. 35–37, 44 — recall machinery and penalties |
| APPLICATION.md | Arts. 50–52 — repeal, transition, application from 13 December 2024 |
Scope note: authorised representatives (Art. 10), the responsible-person and traceability articles (Arts. 16–18), online-marketplace duties (Art. 22), the Safety Gate system (Arts. 25–27, 34) and the market-surveillance/governance chapters can be added with the same tooling when needed.
Key obligations at a glance
- Only safe products may be placed or made available on the market (Art. 5); safety is assessed against the Art. 6 aspects with presumptions for standards-conformant products (Art. 7).
- Manufacturers: internal risk analysis and technical documentation, kept at the surveillance authorities' disposal for 10 years (Art. 9(2)–(3)), plus complaint investigation and corrective action (Art. 9); importers and distributors verify and do not ship what they know to be non-compliant (Art. 11, Art. 12).
- Distance sales: manufacturer identity + product identification + warnings in the online offer (Art. 19).
- Recall: direct consumer notification, template notice, choice of remedies (Arts. 35–37).
Enforcement
National market surveillance authorities under Regulation (EU) 2019/1020; penalties are national, must be "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" (Art. 44). Consumer representative actions apply via Directive (EU) 2020/1828 (Art. 39, not extracted).
Related
- Product-safety cluster index — how the GPSR combines with RED/EMC/RoHS/WEEE/Toy Safety for one device
- EU AI Act — the GPSR's "evolving, learning and predictive functionalities" aspect overlaps AI-feature territory the AI Act regulates directly
Sources
- EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (GPSR), consolidated text 02023R0988-20260529
- European Commission — Safety Gate
Meta
Article text in the content documents is reproduced verbatim from the EUR-Lex consolidated text (CELEX 02023R0988-20260529) and built/re-verified mechanically by tools/eur-lex/build_eu_product_safety.py (verify mode; do not hand-edit article text; adopt new consolidation ids deliberately). Anchors: official ELI ids plus derived paragraph/point anchors from printed labels.