As European consumers, it will be useful for us to learn this new acronym: GPSR, which stands for General Product Safety Regulation. It is useful to us because it introduces new protections throughout the European Union for consumers.Some rules are indeed already there, but they date back to 2001 and must therefore be updated in the light of the major changes that have also taken place in commerce, in particular with the rise of online shopping.

 It also and especially applies to online sellers of products: among the aspects that affect us most as consumers, the removal from sale of products that are found to be dangerous within 2 days of receiving orders from the authorities, but also the obligation to process any complaints from consumers within 3 days.

For products that have already been sold and are recalled by the seller/manufacturer, we shall have the right to a replacement or refund.It will be compulsory to indicate the manufacturer's contact details, so that the consumer can easily communicate his claims.

Also for products coming from outside the EU, a responsible entity, against which we can assert our rights, will have to be made known from the moment of purchase.

The GPSR will come into force at the end of 2024, but we can be confident that many companies will already start complying with it now.

And as a corollary to this, the news that if we inadvertently sign 'unfair' contractual clauses in a purchase, even online, we have even more time to challenge them. This was ruled by the Italian Court of Cassazione in a judgment of 6 April 2023, but perhaps I will tell you more about that some other time.

Last update Augusto 2023