About this site
Free guides to EU product law for businesses selling into the EU from outside it. Every claim is read from the published text and carries the article number it came from.
What this site is
This site explains EU product rules to businesses that have to comply with them from outside the EU. It is written to be read once and acted on. Each guide opens with the answer, then shows the working.
It also does something most guides do not. It tells you which rules you can skip. A regulation that does not apply to your product is as useful to know as one that does, and it is the part nobody writes down, because there is nothing to sell against it.
Nothing here is legal advice. It is a reading of published law, shown with its sources.
Who it is for
Any business established outside the EU that ships consumer products to buyers inside it. Size is not a filter. A one-person shop and a company with a compliance department are bound by the same articles, and both are written for here. It covers selling direct from your own shop and selling through a marketplace. The guides assume you are not a lawyer and do not want to become one.
If you are established in the EU, the guides will still be accurate, but they are not aimed at you. Several of the duties they cover fall differently when the business is inside the Union.
How it is researched
Every legal claim on this site is read from the published text of the instrument itself, at publications.europa.eu, addressed by its CELEX number. The General Product Safety Regulation, for example, is read at publications.europa.eu/resource/celex/32023R0988. That is the official text, not a summary of it.
The article number is printed beside the claim, on the line where the claim is made. Not at the bottom, and not on another page. If a table says a duty binds you, the article that says so is in the next column. You can open the source and read the same sentence we read.
Where something is not verified, the page says so. There is a label for it, and it is used. A guide that never admits a gap is guessing somewhere, and you cannot tell where. We would rather print the gap than paper over it.
Every guide carries a Last checked date and names the instrument it rests on. When the text behind a guide changes, the guide changes, and the change is recorded with a date.
Where the rest of this is written down
- Editorial policy is the full set of rules the guides are written under, including how sources are chosen and how often pages are reviewed.
- Corrections is where mistakes are logged, with the date they were fixed.
- Changelog is the dated record of substantive changes to pages.
- Contact is how to reach us, including to report an error.