Jurisdiction
For products sold in EU
Law Summary
Applying from December 2024, the GPSR modernizes EU safety rules for non-food consumer products. It strengthens obligations for manufacturers, importers, and online marketplaces, enhances market surveillance and traceability (e.g., requiring contact information on products), and improves coordination of product recalls.
Law Obligation
The ESPR aims to significantly improve the circularity, energy performance and other environmental sustainability aspects of products placed on the EU market. Textile apparel, footwear and furniture including mattresses are ESPR priorities.
The legislation enables the setting of performance and information conditions – known as ‘ecodesign requirements’ – for almost all categories of physical goods (with some exceptions, eg food and feed, including to:
- Improve product durability, reusability, upgradability and reparability
- Make products more energy and resource-efficient
- Address the presence of substances that inhibit circularity
- Increase recycled content
- Make products easier to remanufacture and recycle
- Set rules on carbon and environmental footprints
- Improve the availability of information on product sustainability
Large and medium size businesses will have to report of the amount in weight, of unsold stock. This will include the proportion of discarded products that goes for reuse, refurbishment and remanufacturing, recycling, other recovery including energy recovery, and disposal operations. The measures planned for and taken to prevent the destruction of unsold consumer goods will also have to be reported as the destruction of these will be banned – there is a specific list of goods in this category.
