GPSR, Plainly: the Responsible Person and What It Actually Demands.
Of all the EU requirements that trip up non-EU sellers, the General Product Safety Regulation, GPSR, is probably the one that catches the most people, because it introduced a requirement a lot of sellers had never dealt with before: you need someone based in the EU to be responsible for your product. Let me strip the jargon off it and tell you plainly what it is and what it actually demands, because behind the intimidating name it's a manageable checklist.
First, the honest caveat: this is orientation, not legal advice, and the details vary by product and change over time, so treat this as a map of the terrain, not a substitute for proper guidance on your specific products.
What GPSR is, in one breath
GPSR is the EU's baseline product-safety regulation for consumer goods. It came into force in December 2024, replacing the older product-safety regime, and it applies to most non-food consumer products sold to consumers in the EU (and Northern Ireland) regardless of where the seller is based. That last part is the bit that matters for you: it doesn't care that you're in the UK or elsewhere. If you're selling a consumer product to EU consumers, it applies to you.
Its purpose is simple and reasonable: to make sure products sold to EU consumers are safe, and that if something's wrong with a product, there's an accountable, reachable operator inside the EU who can deal with it. Most of its specific demands flow from that one goal.
The Responsible Person - the requirement that catches people
The centrepiece, and the thing that catches non-EU sellers off guard, is the Responsible Person (sometimes called the EU economic operator). The rule is essentially: for a product to be sold to EU consumers, there must be a person or entity established in the EU who takes on defined responsibilities for that product's safety and compliance.
If you're a UK-based brand, you almost certainly don't automatically have this — your business is in the UK, which is no longer in the EU. So you need to appoint one: an EU-based party who agrees to act as your Responsible Person. This can be arranged — there are service providers who act as a Responsible Person for exactly this purpose, but it's a step you have to consciously take, and it's the step that surprises people who assumed their UK setup was enough.
What does the Responsible Person actually do? In essence, they're the accountable EU-based point of contact for your product's compliance: their name and contact details go on the product or its packaging, they hold or can access the product's technical and safety documentation, they liaise with authorities if there's a safety concern, and they're the reachable entity that makes the "someone in the EU is accountable for this" principle real. They're your compliance anchor inside the market.
The other duties, plainly
Beyond appointing the Responsible Person, GPSR brings a handful of concrete obligations. Stripped of jargon, they amount to:
Label the product with the Responsible Person's details. The RP's name and contact information need to appear on the product or packaging, so a consumer or authority can see who's accountable.
Hold the safety documentation. You need the paperwork that shows your product is safe: technical documentation, risk assessment, test reports, declarations of conformity as applicable to your product type. Not necessarily submitted anywhere by default, but held and available if asked.
Carry a product identifier. The product needs to be identifiable — a model number, batch, or similar — so it can be traced.
Provide warnings and instructions in the local language. Safety information, warnings and instructions need to be in the language of the market where it's sold. A German customer gets German; a French customer gets French. This is a genuine, often-underestimated piece of work if you're selling across several EU markets.
How it actually bites on Amazon
Here's why you can't just ignore it and hope. Amazon enforces GPSR directly on the platform. It collects Responsible Person information in Seller Central, displays it on the product detail page, and crucially removes offers that don't comply and can reject FBA inbound shipments missing the required information. So a GPSR gap isn't a quiet legal risk sitting in the background; it's an operational one that can pull your listing or block your stock from going in. The marketplace is actively policing it, because EU law now requires marketplaces to police third-party compliance.
The reassuring part
That all sounds like a lot when you list it out, but here's the perspective: it's a finite, known checklist, not an open-ended mystery. Appoint a Responsible Person, get their details on your labelling, hold your safety documentation, make sure your product's identifiable, translate your safety information. Each of those is a concrete, solvable task, and there are established service providers for the trickiest bits (the RP role especially). It's work, but it's bounded work — and, per the whole logic of the moat, it's work most of your competitors won't bother to do, which is precisely why doing it puts you in a less crowded market.
Don't let the intimidating name stop you. GPSR is a checklist, not a wall, and like every barrier in cross-border selling, the fact that it feels like a wall is exactly why it protects the sellers who treat it as a checklist.
General orientation, not legal advice: GPSR obligations vary by product and change over time; take professional advice for your specific products.
FAQ
Do I need a Responsible Person if I only sell in the UK, not the EU?
No, GPSR only applies to products sold to consumers in the EU and Northern Ireland, so a seller trading purely in the UK market does not need one under this rule. The catch is that Northern Ireland falls under the EU regime here, so sellers using UK wide FBA settings without checking exactly where their stock ships can be caught by GPSR without realising it.
What happens if I do not have a Responsible Person and Amazon finds out?
Amazon removes the offer and can reject FBA inbound shipments that arrive without the required Responsible Person information. It also shows up earlier than that, missing Responsible Person data tends to surface as a compliance flag on your account health dashboard in Seller Central, so it can affect your account before a listing ever actually goes down.
Can I act as my own Responsible Person if I already have EU based staff?
Yes, as long as that person or entity is genuinely established in the EU and willing to take on the role, there is no requirement to use a third party service. What matters is that whoever takes it on actually understands the obligations involved, since being Responsible Person means being the real point of contact for regulators, not just having a name printed on a label.
About the author
Zamir Cajee is co-founder of This Way Up, a UK business specialising in Amazon marketplace strategy, and co-host of The Upside Podcast, where he and the team break down how Amazon actually works — and how it lies to you. Zamir has built multi-million dollar businesses from scratch and has been selling into the EU since 2016.
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