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Start with the product and hazard. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/3173 requires national authorities making the Safety Gate assessment to describe a harm scenario: how a defect or dangerous situation causes an accident or adverse effect and then harm, how severe the harm is, and how probable the full sequence is during the product's foreseeable lifetime. An economic operator should supply product-specific evidence that lets the authority test those points.

Severity has four levels. Level 1 is minor and normally reversible after basic treatment; level 2 is moderate, may require a hospital visit but generally not hospitalisation, and affects functioning for no more than six months; level 3 is severe, normally requires hospitalisation and affects functioning for more than six months or permanently; level 4 is life-threatening or potentially fatal and includes severe loss of limbs or function. Authorities may depart from this table only in exceptional cases and must justify the departure.

Probability is the compound probability of the scenario steps, not the frequency of the defect alone. The delegated index runs from very frequent at 50% or more during foreseeable product life through frequent, common, occasional, unlikely, unusual, and rare to extremely rare at one in a million or less. The official grid combines that probability band with severity to produce serious, high, medium, or low risk.

The delegated criteria use four risk results for Safety Gate purposes: serious, high, medium, and low. Where several hazards or harm scenarios exist, national authorities must assess each scenario and use the highest resulting level for the Article 26 notification analysis.

The GPSR also treats some serious-risk situations differently. A serious risk can be presumed where the delegated criteria are met, including when the product is linked to probable severe harm without adequate consumer precautions or information, when the economic operator or online marketplace indicates serious risk, or when the product has been subject to recall, withdrawal, or online-content removal based on voluntary measures.

Serious risk matters because GPSR Article 26 uses Safety Gate for rapid exchange of information about corrective measures for dangerous products. The delegated Safety Gate rules classify serious-risk notifications separately from other-risk notifications and require the notification to include product identification, risk level, risk assessment, and the taken or envisaged corrective measures.

A serious-risk conclusion should therefore trigger two records at the same time: the consumer-safety action record and the notification evidence record. The first explains what will remove or reduce the risk; the second explains why the case is serious enough for Safety Gate handling and what information authorities need to identify the product and follow up.

Do not describe the risk level separately from the action. The evidence should show why the product is dangerous, which consumers or end users can be harmed, whether the product is still in listings, stock, distribution, or consumer hands, and which corrective measure is proportionate to reduce or eliminate the risk.

For a recall, the GPSR requires consumer-facing information that is clear enough for consumers to identify the product, understand the hazard, and know what action to take. The recall notice must avoid wording that lowers risk perception, such as presenting the recall as merely voluntary or precautionary when the product safety recall must be taken seriously.

Avoid making the answer look more precise than the source material. The official source Safety Gate method supports severity, probability, serious/high/medium/low outcomes, highest-scenario handling, presumptions of serious risk, and notification evidence. It does not support an invented numeric company score, a universal matrix outside the delegated criteria, or national authority procedures not present in the cited source material.

Also avoid treating any certificate, standard, or supplier statement as conclusive by itself. It can support the risk decision only when it matches the product, hazard, affected market, and corrective measure being documented.

The GPSR applies to products placed or made available on the EU market whether they are new, used, repaired, or reconditioned. A product can also be in scope if it was not originally intended for consumers but is likely, under reasonably foreseeable conditions, to be used by consumers.

For used-product channels, the first test is whether a trader is supplying a consumer product for distribution, consumption, or use on the Union market in the course of a commercial activity. Private, non-commercial fact patterns are not the same as a trader placing or making products available on the market.

Check legacy stock separately. Under Article 51, Member States may not impede the continued making available of products that complied with Directive 2001/95/EC and were placed on the market before 13 December 2024. That transition depends on evidence of the earlier placing on the market and former-law conformity; age or second-hand status alone is not enough.

Two GPSR exclusions are especially important for used and refurbished-product pages. Antiques are excluded. Products that need repair or reconditioning before use are also outside this GPSR application rule when they are placed or made available on the market and are clearly marked as needing that repair or reconditioning before use.

Do not stretch those exclusions. A working refurbished item marketed for ordinary consumer use is different from an item explicitly sold as needing repair before use. A collectible claim should be supported by facts showing why consumers cannot reasonably expect state-of-the-art safety standards.

The duty owner depends on the role in the supply chain. Manufacturers must ensure products meet the general safety requirement, carry out an internal risk analysis, and draw up technical documentation before placing products on the market. Importers, distributors, authorised representatives, fulfilment service providers, and other economic operators have role-specific duties.

A refurbisher or reseller can become the manufacturer for GPSR purposes if it places the product on the market under its own name or trademark. A substantial modification is a physical or digital change that affects safety, was not foreseen in the initial risk assessment, changes or creates a hazard or increases risk, and was not made by a consumer for personal use. A person making that change is treated as the manufacturer for the affected part, or for the whole product if the change affects overall safety.

For a product sold as safe to use, evidence should connect the condition of the specific item or batch to the GPSR safety conclusion. Manufacturer duties include internal risk analysis and technical documentation with the product description, essential safety characteristics, possible risks, solutions adopted to eliminate or mitigate those risks, test reports where relevant, and applied standards or other safety elements.

Used and refurbished products often need more condition-specific evidence than new stock. The record should show what was inspected, repaired, replaced, cleaned, updated, retested, relabelled, or repackaged, and whether instructions and warnings still match the product that will reach the consumer. Compare physical and digital changes with the original risk analysis so the file records whether Article 13 shifts manufacturer duties to the refurbisher.

The GPSR distance-sales rule applies when economic operators make products available online or through other distance sales. The offer must clearly and visibly show manufacturer contact information, responsible-person information where the manufacturer is not established in the Union, product identification including a picture and type or other identifier, and required warnings or safety information in an understandable language for the Member State where the product is made available.

Online marketplace providers must organise their interfaces so traders can provide that product safety and traceability information and consumers can access it from the product listing. Marketplace providers also have GPSR duties for product-safety contacts, internal processes, dangerous-product orders, notices, Safety Gate use, and cooperation with authorities and traders.

For consumer products made available online or through other distance sales, GPSR Article 19 requires the offer itself to clearly and visibly indicate four groups of information before purchase.

The listing needs the manufacturer's name, registered trade name or registered trade mark, plus postal and electronic contact address. If the manufacturer is not established in the EU, the listing also needs the name, postal address, and electronic address of the responsible person in the Union under GPSR Article 16 or Market Surveillance Regulation Article 4. Article 19 says "at least," so sector-specific Union harmonisation law can require additional offer information.

The offer must also identify the product, including a picture, the product type, and any other product identifier. Any warning or safety information required on the product, packaging, or accompanying document must appear in a language easily understood by consumers in the Member State where the product is made available.

The evidence file should prove what consumers and marketplace operators could see at the time the offer was live. That matters because GPSR and the Safety Gate notification rules use offer-level details, not only internal catalogue records.

For each EU-facing offer, keep a dated listing capture that shows the product page, seller or trader account, marketplace name if applicable, offer URL, listing or offer identifier, product photo, product type, model or SKU, manufacturer details, EU responsible-person details when required, and the displayed warnings or safety information.

Use the listing review as a release gate for every EU-facing consumer product offer. The reviewer should compare the live page against the approved product safety file, not only against a merchandising checklist. Reopen the review after a manufacturer or responsible-person change, new product variant, changed warning, new Member State target, marketplace migration, corrective action, or listing restoration.

Most listing failures happen when safety information is treated as back-office data instead of consumer-facing offer content. GPSR listing duties attach to the online offer, so the live page has to carry the relevant information clearly enough for a consumer to see it before purchase.

Treat the report as a product-safety case. Identify whether it is an authority order to remove, disable, or warn on a dangerous-product offer; a notice submitted under the marketplace notice mechanism; a Safety Gate Portal alert; or information showing that the marketplace has actual knowledge of a dangerous product offered through its service.

For an authority order under GPSR Article 22(4), the marketplace must be able to receive and process the order, act without undue delay and within two working days from receipt, and tell the issuing market surveillance authority electronically what effect was given to the order. Orders can also cover identical content for a prescribed period when the order supplies the identifying information, requires no independent assessment by the marketplace, and allows a proportionate search and removal using reliable automated tools.

For product-safety notices received under Article 16 of the Digital Services Act, GPSR Article 22(8) imposes a separate processing duty: without undue delay and within three working days from receipt. That notice handling record should stay separate from an authority order record because the trigger, evidence threshold, and response clock are different.

Safety Gate and the Safety Business Gateway serve different parts of the marketplace response. Safety Gate circulates authority alerts about dangerous non-food products, including the product, risk, and measures taken. The GPSR also requires marketplaces to take account of regular dangerous-product information received through the Safety Gate Portal when applying voluntary measures to detect, identify, remove, or disable dangerous-product offers.

The Safety Business Gateway is the route for businesses, including concerned online marketplace providers, to report dangerous products and accidents to Member State market surveillance authorities. Where the marketplace has actual knowledge of dangerous products offered through its interface, Article 22 requires it to inform the relevant Member States through the Safety Business Gateway with available risk, quantity, and corrective-measure details.