EU Responsible Person Rules for Non-EU Brands Using a 3PL

If you sell consumer products into the EU and you have no company of your own inside it, someone established in the EU has to be answerable for the safety of those products. That person can turn out to be your fulfilment provider, whether or not either of you intended it. This page sets out how the rule works, who is caught by it, and what it means when you choose a warehouse in the Netherlands.

What the rule requires

The General Product Safety Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/988, was adopted on 10 May 2023, entered into force on 12 June 2023 and has applied since 13 December 2024. It replaced the old General Product Safety Directive 2001/95/EC.

Article 16(1) is the operative sentence. A product covered by the Regulation shall not be placed on the market unless there is an economic operator established in the Union who is responsible for the tasks set out in article 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 in respect of that product.

Read that as a condition of market access rather than as paperwork. Without an EU established operator carrying the role, the product may not lawfully be placed on the EU market at all.

The four operators who can hold the role

The list is not in the GPSR itself. It sits in article 4(2) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, which the GPSR switches on for general consumer products. In order:

1. A manufacturer established in the Union.
2. An importer, where the manufacturer is not established in the Union.
3. An authorised representative who holds a written mandate from the manufacturer.
4. A fulfilment service provider established in the Union with respect to the products it handles, where no operator in the first three categories is established in the Union.

The fourth category is the one that surprises people. It applies by operation of law. Nobody has to nominate the fulfilment provider and the fulfilment provider does not have to agree. If it handles your products and there is no EU manufacturer, no EU importer and no authorised representative, it is the responsible economic operator.

The contrast with an authorised representative is sharp. Article 10 of the GPSR requires a written mandate for that role, so a representative can decline. A fulfilment provider cannot decline the statutory position. It can only decline the business.

What counts as a fulfilment service provider

The GPSR defines it as any natural or legal person offering, in the course of commercial activity, at least two of the following services: warehousing, packaging, addressing and dispatching, without having ownership of the products involved.

Two of four is a low bar. A provider that stores your goods and picks and packs them is already inside the definition, and a normal pick, pack and ship operation covers three of the four. The NVWA, which supervises this in the Netherlands, states the same test and adds that a fulfilment provider usually also carries the obligations of a distributor.

Postal services, parcel delivery services and freight transport services are excluded. Your carrier is not caught. Your warehouse is.

What the responsible person actually has to do

Four tasks come from article 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020. Verify that the declaration of conformity and technical documentation have been drawn up, where the applicable legislation requires them. Provide a market surveillance authority, on a reasoned request, with all information and documentation needed to demonstrate conformity, in a language that authority can easily understand. Inform the authorities when there is reason to believe the product presents a risk. Cooperate with the authorities, including making sure that immediate corrective action is taken when they reasonably require it.

The GPSR adds a fifth in article 16(2). The responsible operator has to check regularly that the product still complies with the technical documentation and with the labelling and traceability requirements in article 9, and has to provide documented evidence of those checks on request.

For general consumer products there is no EU declaration of conformity. The document that matters is the technical documentation under article 9(2), which has to contain at least a general description of the product and the characteristics relevant to assessing its safety, the internal risk analysis, test results and the standards applied. It has to be kept available to the authorities for ten years after the product was placed on the market, and kept up to date when the product changes.

That is the part most brands underestimate. The role is not a mailbox. It carries a standing obligation to check conformity and to hold evidence that the checks happened.

What has to appear on the product

Article 16(3) requires the name, registered trade name or registered trade mark, and contact details of the responsible operator, including the postal address and the electronic address, to be indicated on the product, on its packaging, on the parcel or on an accompanying document.

The electronic address can be an email address or a dedicated section of a website that lets consumers make contact directly. Note that the GPSR asks for both a postal and an electronic address, while the older rule for harmonised products asks only for a postal address.

The commercial consequence is direct. If your fulfilment provider is your responsible person, its name and address go on your packaging. Changing provider means changing that, which means relabelling or repackaging whatever stock is already printed.

Harmonised products follow the older rule

Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 came first, and it is limited by its own article 4(5) to a defined list of harmonisation legislation. That list covers construction products, personal protective equipment, gas appliances, machinery, toys, ecodesign, RoHS, pyrotechnics, recreational craft, simple pressure vessels, electromagnetic compatibility, weighing and measuring instruments, ATEX equipment, low voltage equipment, radio equipment and pressure equipment.

For those products the responsible person obligation comes from article 4 of Regulation 2019/1020, not from article 16 of the GPSR. The GPSR extends the same idea to everything else. The practical outcome is nearly identical, and the fulfilment provider fallback exists in both, but it is worth naming the right instrument if you are ever in correspondence with an authority about a toy or a radio product.

Cosmetics work differently

Cosmetic products sit under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 and the structure is not the same.

Article 4 requires that a responsible person be designated within the Community, and only products for which one has been designated may be placed on the market. Where the manufacturer is established outside the EU, it has to designate by written mandate a person established inside the EU who accepts the role in writing. An importer is the responsible person for the product it imports, and may in turn designate someone else by written mandate. A distributor becomes the responsible person if it places the product under its own name or trade mark, or modifies a product already on the market.

There is no automatic fallback to the fulfilment provider in cosmetics. Somebody has to be appointed and has to accept. A cosmetics 3PL does not inherit the role by default, and many will not take it.

The obligations under article 5 run to safety, good manufacturing practice, the safety assessment, sampling, notification and labelling. Article 11 requires a Product Information File, kept readily accessible in electronic or other form at the address shown on the label, for ten years after the last batch was placed on the market. Article 13 requires notification to the Commission before the product goes on the market, through the Cosmetic Products Notification Portal.

The physical premises claim

Providers of responsible person services frequently say that the role requires real premises and that a virtual office will not do, sometimes adding that the address has to be able to host an inspection. That is worth examining, because it is not what the law says.

The GPSR and Regulation 2019/1020 require the operator to be established in the Union and to publish an address. Neither contains a requirement for premises, staffing or inspection hosting. The European Commission guidelines on the application of the EU general product safety framework, published in November 2025, define the responsible person as an economic operator established in the EU who performs the tasks, and say nothing about offices, post boxes or virtual addresses. The NVWA pages for fulfilment providers and authorised representatives say nothing about it either.

Two things are true underneath the marketing. Establishment in the Union is a real legal concept and implies a stable presence rather than a nameplate. And market surveillance authorities have the power under article 14(4) of Regulation 2019/1020 to carry out unannounced inspections and to enter premises used for business purposes, which applies to economic operators generally. Neither converts into a premises test for holding the role.

The one place where an address carries a substantive duty is cosmetics, where the Product Information File must be readily accessible at the address printed on the label. That is satisfiable electronically and it still does not mandate an office.

What happens at the border and at inspection

Customs authorities are required under article 26 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 to suspend release for free circulation in defined situations, and one of them is where the name and contact details of the responsible operator cannot be indicated or identified. Missing responsible person details are therefore a stated ground for goods to be stopped at entry, alongside missing documentation, non-compliant marking and suspicion of serious risk.

Market surveillance authorities can demand documents, carry out unannounced inspections, enter business premises, order an operator to end non-compliance, prohibit or restrict making a product available, order withdrawal or recall, buy samples under a cover identity, and require a marketplace to remove a listing or restrict access to an online interface.

In the Netherlands the GPSR was implemented through an amendment to the Warenwet which entered into force on 10 April 2025. The NVWA supervises, the ACM supervises the online marketplace provisions in article 22, and the instruments are administrative fines, orders subject to a penalty payment, and criminal liability under the Wet op de economische delicten where a standalone order is not complied with.

The first coordinated EU sweep under the GPSR ran from 1 April to 15 May 2025 and looked at 1,741 offers of childcare articles across 47 online marketplaces. Responsible person information was compliant in 68 percent of cases. In 4 percent it was partial and in 28 percent no information was found at all. Compliance was 81 percent on the very large platforms and 38 percent on smaller ones. Authorities issued 252 orders to marketplace operators. Some authorities also found businesses that did not know they had been listed as the responsible person for someone else’s product.

The wider trend runs the same way. The Commission reported 4,671 Safety Gate alerts for 2025, the highest figure since 2003 and 13 percent up on the year before, with follow-up actions up 35 percent.

What this means when you choose a warehouse

Three practical points follow.

First, establish who your responsible person is before you sign, not after. If the answer is that nobody has been appointed and you have no EU entity, then your fulfilment provider is it by default, and you have handed a compliance role to a company that was quoting you on pallet rates.

Second, expect to be asked. The NVWA formulates the fallback in evidential terms: if a fulfilment provider cannot demonstrate who the EU responsible person is for a product, then the fulfilment provider is the EU responsible person, and has to meet all the requirements of a manufacturer or importer. That is a heavier test than the statutory one and it is a sound reason for a Dutch 3PL to demand documentation at onboarding. A provider that asks for your technical file is a provider that understands its own exposure.

Third, understand what it does to switching costs. If the responsible person is printed on your packaging, the identity of your logistics provider is tied to your labelling. Appointing an independent authorised representative, or setting up your own EU entity, separates the two and keeps the fulfilment contract a fulfilment contract.

The Digital Product Passport

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, entered into force on 18 July 2024 and is the legal basis for the Digital Product Passport. It creates no passport obligation on its own. Requirements arrive product group by product group through delegated acts, each followed by a transition period.

The 2025 to 2030 working plan prioritises steel and aluminium, textiles with a focus on apparel, furniture, tyres and mattresses, together with a number of energy related products, with a mid-term review in 2028. The one passport with a fixed date is the battery passport, which applies from 18 February 2027 under the Batteries Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 rather than under the ESPR. For textiles and most consumer goods the realistic horizon is 2029 or later, and the Commission describes its own timetable as indicative.

Where this becomes a warehouse question is in the onboarding. Providers differ widely in whether they will accept the responsible person role, what documentation they demand before they take your stock, and how they price the risk. Tell us what you sell and where it is made, and we will put the request to Dutch providers that already handle regulated consumer goods.

Related reading on this site: European e-commerce fulfilment, storing goods in the Netherlands without a Dutch company, and importer and exporter of record services.

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