RAPEX (Safety Gate) and Safety Business Gateway: which is yours

The Regulation’s own words are “It is opportune to change the abbreviated name from RAPEX to Safety Gate for greater clarity and better outreach to consumers” (recital 68). RAPEX was the Union Rapid Information System through which the market surveillance authorities in the Member States exchanged information on dangerous products (recital 1).

The Commission was already using the name Safety Gate when it proposed the Regulation in June 2021. Its proposal “changes the name of the RAPEX system to Safety Gate, while maintaining the same characteristics of the system” (COM(2021) 346, explanatory memorandum, Chapter VI).

In the Regulation, Safety Gate has three parts: the Safety Gate Rapid Alert System, which is what RAPEX was; the Safety Gate Portal, for the public; and the Safety Business Gateway, which you file into (recital 68, Art. 25(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 25, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

“Something has gone wrong” means one of two things: a product of yours you believe is dangerous, or an accident caused by one. Nothing you type into the Safety Business Gateway lands in the Safety Gate directly (Art. 25(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 25, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., Art. 34(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 34, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). It gets there through an authority, after that authority has acted.

All of it assumes GPSR covers your product in the first place. That test is the scope article and the exclusions around it, taken in full on the page on whether GPSR applies to you, with the Regulation itself in the GPSR guide.

Which portal is which

The two names sit next to each other in the Regulation and do opposite jobs. The Safety Business Gateway is the one with your login in it. The Safety Gate is the one with the authorities in it.

The Safety Business Gateway (Art. 27Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 27Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). The Commission maintains a web portal enabling economic operatorsArt. 3(13)the manufacturer, the authorised representative, the importer, the distributor, the fulfilment service provider or any other natural or legal person who is subject to obligations in relation to the manufacture of products or making them available on the market ...Click the term for the full definition and providers of online marketplacesArt. 3(14)a provider of an intermediary service using an online interface which allows consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders for the sale of productsClick the term for the full definition to provide, in an easy way, market surveillance authorities and consumers with the information referred to in Art. 9(8)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 9, paragraph 8Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and (9), Art. 10(2)(c)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 10, paragraph 2, point (c)Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., Art. 11(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 11, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and (8), Art. 12(4)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 12, paragraph 4Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., and Articles 20Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and 22Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. (Art. 27(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 27, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). That list is the whole of it. A duty of yours that is not on it does not travel through this portal.

The landing page and the user manual open without an account. Filing needs an EU Login account, and inside you see only the notifications you submitted yourself. You can also reach the Gateway from the Safety Gate Portal. The notification form has eight sections: the authorities that receive it, your details as the operator, the product, the accident, the risk assessment, the corrective actions, other companies in the supply chain, and anything else. It is available in 24 languages, takes attachments up to 10 MB, and signs you out after 30 minutes without activity. Technical problems go to JUST-BusinessGateway@ec.europa.eu.

The Commission’s guidelines for the Gateway (Art. 27(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 27, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.) are Commission Notice C/2025/6238, published on 21 November 2025. Point 5.2(a) reads: “To access the Safety Business Gateway, an EU login account (the Commission’s mandatory authentication service) is necessary.” Point 5.1 adds: “You can access the Safety Business Gateway through the relevant section of the Safety Gate Portal.” The user manual for economic operators and marketplace providers is version 6.0.0 of 17 September 2026, 35 pages. The manual for national authorities is not public.

The Safety Gate Rapid Alert System (Art. 25Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 25Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). The Commission develops, modernises and maintains a rapid alert system for the exchange of information on corrective measures concerning dangerous products (Art. 25(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 25, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). Access belongs to the Commission and to the EU countries, each of which designates a single national contact point, responsible at least for checking that notifications are complete and submitting them for validation by the Commission (Art. 25(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 25, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). You are not in that sentence.

The Safety Gate Portal (Art. 34Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 34Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). This is the public face. The Commission maintains it for the purposes of Art. 9(9)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 9, paragraph 9Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., Articles 20Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and 22Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., Art. 31(5)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 31, paragraph 5Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and Art. 33(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., and it gives the general public “free of charge and open access to selected information notified in accordance with Article 26Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationThe whole regulationClick opens the law on the EU Publications Office.” (Art. 34(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 34, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). Consumers and other interested parties can also use a separate section of it to tell the Commission about a product that might present a risk (Art. 34(3)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 34, paragraph 3Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). The portal is at ec.europa.eu/safety-gate, and its public alerts are at ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts.

What you file, and when

Which of these lands on you depends on the role you hold for the product. Each role and its full set of duties is in what GPSR requires of you, by role.

An accident. The manufacturerArt. 3(8)any natural or legal person who manufactures a product or has a product designed or manufactured, and markets that product under that person’s name or trademarkClick the term for the full definition shall ensure that, through the Safety Business Gateway, an accident caused by a product placed or made available on the market is notified “without undue delay from the moment it knows about the accident, to the competent authorities of the Member State where the accident occurred” (Art. 20(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). The notification carries the type and identification number of the product and the circumstances of the accident, if known; anything else relevant follows on request (Art. 20(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). An accident is defined in the Regulation as “occurrences associated with the use of a product that resulted in an individual’s death or in serious adverse effects on that individual’s health and safety, permanent or temporary, including injuries, other damage to the body, illnesses and chronic health effects” (Art. 20(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

An importerArt. 3(10)any natural or legal person established within the Union who places a product from a third country on the Union marketClick the term for the full definition or distributorArt. 3(11)any natural or legal person in the supply chain, other than the manufacturer or the importer, who makes a product available on the marketClick the term for the full definition that learns of an accident does not file first. It informs the manufacturer without undue delay, and the manufacturer either makes the notification or instructs the importer or one of the distributors to make it (Art. 20(3)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20, paragraph 3Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). Where the manufacturer is outside the EU, the responsible person within the meaning of Art. 16(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 16, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. of GPSR or Art. 4(1)Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Market Surveillance RegulationArticle 4, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Market Surveillance RegulationThe whole regulationClick opens the law on the EU Publications Office. who knows of the accident must make sure the notification is made (Art. 20(4)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 20, paragraph 4Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.) - one of the tasks that makes the EU Responsible Person more than a name on a label.

A product of yours that is dangerous. The trigger is belief, not proof: a manufacturer that considers, or has reason to believe on the basis of the information in its possession, that a product it placed on the market is dangerous acts immediately (Art. 9(8)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 9, paragraph 8Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). The same duty sits on every other role in its own words, and all of it goes through the Safety Business Gateway. For a product with its own EU law, these duties do not apply (Art. 2(1)(b)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 2, paragraph 1, point (b)Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.): the duty to act comes from that law. Where that law is on the list in Art. 4(5)Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Market Surveillance RegulationArticle 4, paragraph 5Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Market Surveillance RegulationThe whole regulationClick opens the law on the EU Publications Office., the EU operator under that Regulation also informs the authorities when it has reason to believe the product presents a risk (Art. 4(3)(c)Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Market Surveillance RegulationArticle 4, paragraph 3, point (c)Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). For a product under any other sector law, such as a cosmetic, there is no such operator, and the duty to inform comes from that law alone.

The alert consumers will read. Separately from the notification to the authorities, the Commission shall ensure that information meant to alert consumers can be provided by manufacturers through the Safety Business Gateway, and that it is made available to consumers on the Safety Gate Portal without undue delay (Art. 9(9)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 9, paragraph 9Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). That is the one place where something you type goes straight to the public, by design.

What the marketplace files, not you

A provider of an online marketplaceArt. 3(14)a provider of an intermediary service using an online interface which allows consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders for the sale of productsClick the term for the full definition has Gateway duties of its own, and none of them discharges yours. It registers with the Safety Gate Portal, on its marketplace registration page, and indicates its single contact point there (Art. 22(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). It immediately informs, through the Safety Business Gateway, the market surveillance authorities of the countries where the product was made available about dangerous products offered on its interfaces of which it has actual knowledge, with the details of the risk, the quantity per country still circulating if available, and any corrective measure already taken (Art. 22(12)(d)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22, paragraph 12, point (d)Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). And it notifies, without undue delay through the Gateway, any accident it has been told about that resulted in a serious risk or actual damage to a consumer’s health or safety from a product made available on its marketplace, informing the manufacturer as well (Art. 22(12)(e)(ii)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22, paragraph 12, point (e), point (ii)Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

It works the other direction too, and that is the part that reaches your listing. Providers of online marketplaces take into account the regular information on dangerous products notified by market surveillance authorities under Article 26Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and received through the Safety Gate Portal, including by using the interoperable interface to that portal (Art. 22(6)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22, paragraph 6Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). A Safety Gate alert on a product like yours can pull your listing down before any regulator contacts you.

What the authorities do with it

Once a corrective measure exists, the clock is the authority’s. The EU countries notify through the Safety Gate Rapid Alert System the corrective measures taken by their authorities or by economic operators in relation to dangerous products presenting a serious risk to the health and safety of consumers (Art. 26(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). Whether a risk counts as serious, or as less than serious (Art. 26(3)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 3Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), is the authority’s assessment, made after you file. National authorities submit those notifications without delay and in any event within four working days after the corrective measure is taken (Art. 26(4)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 4Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). The Commission then has four working days from a complete notification to check it and transmit it to the other countries (Art. 26(5)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 5Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

Four things widen that. Envisaged corrective measures may be notified where the urgency of the risk makes it necessary (Art. 26(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), measures may be notified in relation to products presenting a less than serious risk (Art. 26(3)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 3Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), updates, modifications and withdrawals of a measure are notified without undue delay (Art. 26(6)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 6Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), and a country that acts on the same product notifies what it did within four working days (Art. 26(7)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 7Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

What becomes public

The default is publication, not confidentiality. Information available to the national authorities or to the Commission on measures concerning products that present risks to the health and safety of consumers “shall in general be made available to the public, in accordance with the requirements of transparency and without prejudice to the restrictions required for monitoring and investigation activities” (Art. 33(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). In particular, the public has access to information on product identification, the nature of the risk and the measures taken, in formats accessible to persons with disabilities (Art. 33(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

Officials are separately required to protect information obtained under the Regulation and to treat it as confidential under Union and national law (Art. 33(2)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 2Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), and professional secrecy does not stop authorities exchanging between themselves what they need (Art. 33(3)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 3Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). Consumers get a channel of their own in the same article: they and other interested parties may submit complaints to the competent authorities on product safety, on surveillance activities, and on cases where the remedies offered in a recall are not satisfactory, and those complaints are followed up (Art. 33(4)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 4Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

On the portal itself, what is published is selected information notified under Article 26Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. (Art. 34(1)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 34, paragraph 1Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.) - not your filing as you wrote it, and not all of it.

The recall itself

Filing is one step of a dangerous-product response, not the whole of it. The corrective measures, reaching the buyers you can identify, the recall notice word for word and the remedy you owe run on Art. 9(8)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 9, paragraph 8Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., Art. 35Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 35Click opens the article on EUR-Lex. and Art. 36Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 36Click opens the article on EUR-Lex., and they are taken in full in how to do a product recall.

If you do nothing

GPSR sets no figure itself: each EU country lays down the rules on penalties for infringements, and the Regulation asks only that they be effective, proportionate and dissuasive (Art. 44Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 44Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.). Failing to notify is an infringement like any other, and what it costs is set where you sell. The national ceilings are in GPSR fines.

The nearer consequence is that the authority learns anyway. Marketplaces file on dangerous products they have actual knowledge of (Art. 22(12)(d)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 22, paragraph 12, point (d)Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), consumers can report a product straight to the Commission through the Safety Gate Portal (Art. 34(3)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 34, paragraph 3Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.) and complain to their own authority (Art. 33(4)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 33, paragraph 4Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.), and where the Commission identifies products likely to present a serious risk that nobody has notified, it tells the countries concerned, which then verify and notify (Art. 26(8)Regulation (EU) 2023/988, General Product Safety RegulationArticle 26, paragraph 8Click opens the article on EUR-Lex.).

What you can skip