GPSR and PrestaShop: 2026 compliance guide

What the GPSR is and when it applies

The GPSR, short for General Product Safety Regulation, is Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety. It replaces the previous product safety directive and applies from 13 December 2024 to all consumer products placed on the European Union market. The most important change for anyone running an ecommerce business is that the regulation explicitly covers online sales: if you sell physical consumer products to EU customers through your PrestaShop store, the GPSR applies to you directly.

Unlike a directive, an EU regulation is directly applicable in every Member State, with no need for national implementing laws. There is therefore no room for interpretation on the "if": since 13 December 2024 the rules apply to everyone, from large marketplaces to small single-brand shops. Penalties for violations are not set at European level but are laid down by the individual Member States, so they vary from country to country.

What an online product page must show: Article 19

The operational core of the regulation for ecommerce is Article 19, which covers distance sales. It requires the online offer of a product to display, clearly and visibly, a minimum set of information. In practice, every product page in your store must contain:

• Name or registered trade name of the manufacturer, together with the trademark where applicable.
• The manufacturer's postal and electronic address, meaning a physical address and a digital contact point.
• Details of the responsible person in the EU, where the manufacturer is established outside the European Union: the name and contact details of the EU entity accountable for the product's compliance.
• Product identification: a picture, an indication of the type of product and any other identifiers such as a model or batch number, where present.
• Warnings or safety information, in the language of the consumer of the country where the product is sold.

Pay attention to the language requirement: if you sell in several EU countries with a multilingual store, the warnings must be understandable to the local consumer. A warning available only in English on a shop selling to Italy does not meet the requirement.

Who is responsible: manufacturer, seller and marketplace

The GPSR distributes obligations along the whole chain: manufacturer, importer, distributor. As an online seller you are the last link before the consumer, and you are the one publishing the offer: Article 19 applies to the online offer, so it is your product page that must carry the required information. You cannot pass the problem back to your supplier: if the information does not appear on the page, your offer is not compliant.

The trickiest case involves products from non-EU manufacturers, typical of merchants importing from China or other third countries. In this scenario the regulation requires that a responsible person established in the EU exists and that their details appear in the online offer alongside the manufacturer's. Before listing an imported product you therefore need to know who this person is and show their contact details on the product page.

Sellers operating through marketplaces must also make sure their listings carry the same information: the obligation concerns the distance offer as such, not only your own store.

The four types of economic operator, not three

GPSR responsibility does not stop at "manufacturer, seller, marketplace": the regulation distinguishes four distinct roles, and a single product can have more than one economic operator attached at the same time.

• Manufacturer. Whoever makes the product, or has it designed or manufactured and sells it under their own name or trademark. They are the primary party responsible for the product's safety.
• Authorised representative. Required when the manufacturer has no establishment in the EU: an EU-based party the manufacturer appoints in writing to act on their behalf toward the authorities. It is the same role already mentioned above as the "EU responsible person", just under the regulation's own technical name.
• Importer. Whoever first places a product from a third country on the EU market. They have to verify the manufacturer met their obligations before placing it on the market at all.
• Distributor. Anyone in the supply chain, other than the manufacturer and importer, who makes the product available on the market: in online retail this is often the store's own role.

A store selling multiple brands, some European and some not, ends up with different combinations for different products in the same catalog: distributor only for one line, importer for another, if it is the one bringing the goods in from outside the EU.

The limit of default values: fine for the "who", never for the "what"

A default value can correctly cover the manufacturer or responsible party's name, often genuinely the same across a whole range, but it cannot cover safety warnings and usage instructions in bulk, since by nature those are specific to a single product: a generic warning good enough for the whole catalog is not a real safety warning, it is a placeholder text. Bulk assignment works fine for the who (the economic operator), never for the what (warnings and instructions), which stay a per-product, per-language field.

Almost never all-or-nothing: usually one piece is missing

Checks and complaints almost always concern a single missing piece of data on a single product, for example a missing contact address for a non-EU manufacturer, or a safety warning left in the original language instead of being translated. A store that correctly filled in "manufacturer" for a product that actually comes from a non-EU supplier with no European authorised representative still has a gap, because the exact party the regulation wants reachable in Europe is missing.

Which products are excluded

The GPSR applies to physical consumer products. The following, among others, fall outside its scope:

• medicinal products;
• food and feed;
• living plants and animals;
• antiques.

If your catalogue only contains products in these categories, the information obligations of Article 19 do not concern you. If your catalogue is mixed, for example food supplements next to physical accessories, you only need to manage GPSR fields on the products that fall within the regulation.

Common mistakes in online shops

Since the regulation became applicable, the same mistakes keep showing up across a huge number of stores:

• Information buried in a PDF or a generic page. Article 19 requires the data to appear in the offer, that is on the product page, not on a "Terms" page three clicks away.
• Distributor details instead of the manufacturer's. The regulation asks for the manufacturer's name and contact details, not those of the intermediary you buy stock from.
• No EU responsible person for imported products. The most frequent mistake among dropshippers and importers from third countries.
• Warnings only in English on stores selling in Italian, French or German.
• Partial catalogue coverage: fields are filled in on new products and forgotten on hundreds of older references.
• Missing electronic address: the manufacturer's registered office is shown but no email address or digital contact point.

How to make PrestaShop GPSR compliant

The manual route

PrestaShop has no native fields dedicated to GPSR information. The DIY approach means typing manufacturer details, contact addresses, responsible person and warnings into each product description, or creating custom features and editing your theme templates to display them. That works for a ten-product catalogue, but with hundreds or thousands of references it becomes unmanageable: every update has to be repeated by hand, the data is unstructured, a theme change can wipe everything out, and you have no overview of which products are still uncovered.

With a dedicated module

A dedicated module adds structured fields to the product sheet in the back office and displays them automatically in the front office, with a consistent layout across the whole catalogue. The practical benefits: you enter the data once per manufacturer, reuse it across all of that manufacturer's products, import in bulk via CSV, and the information stays in place even if you change theme or upgrade PrestaShop.

The GPSR Product Safety module for PrestaShop

To handle all of this on PrestaShop we built GPSR Product Safety, a module that adds the fields required by the regulation to every product page in your store.

You will find full documentation in the GPSR module guide. If you need to get compliant on other regulatory fronts as well, multi-module carts pay off: the volume discount applies automatically, 10% above 150 € and 15% above 250 € (minimum 2 products).

Frequently asked questions about the GPSR

When does the GPSR apply from?

Regulation (EU) 2023/988 applies from 13 December 2024 to all consumer products placed on the EU market, including online sales.

Does the GPSR apply to a small ecommerce store?

Yes. The regulation applies to all distance sales of consumer products in the EU, with no size thresholds: even a store with a handful of references must display the Article 19 information on its product pages.

What information must the product page show?

The manufacturer's name or trade name with postal and electronic address, the details of the responsible person in the EU where the manufacturer is established outside the EU, the product identification (picture, type and any identifying number) and the warnings or safety information in the consumer's language.

Which products are excluded from the GPSR?

Among others, medicinal products, food and feed, living plants and animals, and antiques are excluded. The regulation covers physical consumer products.

What are the penalties for non-compliance?

The regulation does not set amounts at European level: penalties are laid down by the individual Member States, so they vary from country to country.

How do I add GPSR fields to PrestaShop?

PrestaShop has no dedicated native fields. You can enter the information manually in product descriptions, or use a module such as GPSR Product Safety, which adds structured fields (manufacturer, EU responsible person, warnings) to every product page with CSV import and is compatible from PrestaShop 1.7 to 9.

Ready to comply? Buy GPSR Product Safety (€49.99) or try the live demo first.