22 August 2024
On the 16th August 2024 British Marine attended a panel of over 120 UK businesses and membership organisations to discuss draft guidance on “placing products on the market in Northern Ireland from December 2024”.
From 13 December 2024, the EU Regulation on General Product Safety 2023/988 (GPSR) applies in European Union (EU) Member States. It replaces the provisions in EU Regulation No 1025/2012 and Directive 2020/1828, and repeals the EU Directive 2001/95/EC.
The EU published last year its new General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) which replaces the General Product Safety Directive as well as the EU’s Food Imitating Product Directive (Directive 87/357/EEC). EU GPSR modernises the EU’s general product safety framework and addresses the new challenges posed to product safety by the digitisation of economies. Under the terms of the Windsor Framework, GPSR will be implemented as required in Northern Ireland in December 2024, replacing the General Product Safety Regulations 2005: Northern Ireland.
The objectives of the new Regulation are to:
- Ensure the safety of all products, including those linked to new technologies
- Address the challenges posed by the growth of online sales, particularly those on online marketplaces
- Ensure better enforcement of the rules and more efficient and proportionate market surveillance
- Improve the effectiveness of recalls of dangerous products
GPSR in NI will align the market surveillance rules for products out of scope of EU harmonised legislation, with those applying to harmonised products as set out in the 2019/1020 Regulation on Market Surveillance and Compliance of Products (MSC). This includes the Responsible Economic Operator requirement established in Article 4 of MSC.
The main new provisions introduced by GPSR in NI are:
Responsible Economic Operator – economic operators must have a representative in the EU or NI in order to carry out EU compliance activities before they can place products on those markets.
Modernised general safety requirement – when assessing the safety of a product, factors such as the effect the product has on other products that it will be used with, including the interconnection of those products, should be considered.
Specific obligations for online marketplaces – providers of online marketplaces will be required to engage with some EU market surveillance activities, including registering with the EU Safety Gate Portal.
Robust product traceability requirements – manufacturers are required to designate a single point of contact for consumers to use to raise issues of safety, related to the product.
Strengthened product recalls – explicit requirements on manufacturers, importers and distributors in cases of product recalls.
In many cases, the requirements in GPSR in NI formalise the reality of how businesses are operating under the existing rules across the UK, and it is expected that many businesses will already have arrangements in place to comply, or will be able to make the changes with relative ease to become compliant. For businesses already with a presence in the EU it is not expected that there will be significant changes, However the OPSS were keen to understand the position of GB-based companies that may have or want to have a presence in Northern Ireland, but not the EU.
Further information will be available in due course and British Marine is in discussion with the OPSS regarding specific issues regarding the Marine Industry.