Product Safety in the EU: Everything You Need to Know About the New GPSR (2023/988)

Claire Pierrefeu
4 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Since 13 December 2024, the European consumer landscape has changed drastically with the application of Regulation (EU) 2023/988, better known by its acronym GPSR (General Product Safety Regulation). Less than a year later, an important milestone completed the framework: on 21 November 2025, application guidelines were published. They provide the long-awaited clarifications on the interpretation of the text and its operational requirements.

GPSR: A Universal Safety Net for All Consumer Products

The GPSR applies to all non-food consumer products, whether new, second-hand, repaired, or refurbished. Its strength lies in its transversal scope: it applies whenever there is no stricter specific provision in EU harmonization legislation. The goal is simple: no dangerous product should slip through the safety net, whether sold in physical stores or online.

General Safety Obligation: Ensuring Safe Products on the Market

The GPSR is abased on a general safety obligation: economic operators may only place safe products on the market. A safe product is defined as:

"any product which, under normal or reasonably foreseeable conditions of use, including the actual duration of use, does not present any risk or only the minimum risks compatible with the product’s use, considered acceptable and consistent with a high level of protection of the health and safety of consumers."

To achieve this, the regulation requires a rigorous methodological approach.

Each manufacturer must now carry out an internal risk assessment before placing any product on the market. Risk is defined as "the combination of the probability of an occurrence of a hazard causing harm and the degree of severity of that harm." This assessment must be recorded in technical documentation, proportionate to the product's complexity, and retained for 10 years.

Main Product Safety Assessment Criteria Under the GPSR

Product characteristics: Design, composition, packaging, and instructions.

Consumer categories: Special attention is given to vulnerable consumers (children, elderly, people with disabilities).

Misleading appearance: Products mimicking foodstuff or particularly attractive to children (food imitations) are specifically targeted.

New technologies: Cybersecurity, machine learning (AI) functions, and software updates are now integral to the safety assessment.

Traceability and Notification: New GPSR Obligations for Manufacturers and Importers

The GPSR modernizes market surveillance through two key platforms:

Safety Gate: The former RAPEX system, renamed, for information exchange between authorities on dangerous products.

Safety Business Gateway: A mandatory portal for companies. Any manufacturer or importer aware of a serious accident or a dangerous product on the market must notify through this single access point. For example, in 2025, 2,755 chemical and environmental alerts were reported across various consumer products.

European Tools and Guidelines to Comply with the GPSR

The GPSR relies on a set of guides and resources provided at the European level. They are a useful starting point to understand requirements and structure a compliance approach, but operational implementation often requires dedicated expertise, particularly when demonstrating and documenting risk levels robustly.

SAGA: A First Qualitative Approach

To support risk assessment, the Commission provides SAGA (Safety Gate Risk Assessment) via the Safety Gate ecosystem. This tool can provide a qualitative risk analysis which can be used as a first tiered approach (hazard, exposure, severity/probability) with models adapted to different product types. However, this approach alone is often insufficient when precise quantitative risk levels must be justified.

Blue Guide and GPSR Guidelines for Businesses

For the general implementation framework, operators can rely on the Blue Guide on the application of EU product rules. More specifically, on 21 November 2025, the Commission published dedicated guidelines:

On the application of the general product safety regulation (GPSR) by businesses
On the practical implementation of the Safety Business Gateway

These texts aim to guide and harmonize practices while largely referencing existing EU standards, sector-specific requirements, and risk assessment methodologies already used at the EU level.

Focus on Chemical Risks: Aligning With REACH

When a product contains chemicals chemical component (substances, emissions, migration, skin contact, etc.), the dedicated risk assessment benefits from approaches consistent with REACH, including hazard characterization, exposure scenarios, risk characterization, and risk management measures.

This is precisely the methodological foundation CEHTRA uses daily to produce robust, documented assessments aligned with European expectations, useful in a GPSR compliance approach.

Conclusion: Ensure Your Products Comply with the GPSR

The GPSR (EU Regulation 2023/988) strengthens consumer product safety in Europe and imposes strict obligations on manufacturers and importers for risk assessment, traceability, and notification. To ensure your products fully comply and protect consumers, it is essential to work with experts.