EU GPSR FAQ Marketplace Takedowns

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.

The evidence file should let the marketplace explain why it removed, disabled, warned, reported, or left a listing live. GPSR Article 22 ties marketplace action to the concrete offer of a dangerous product, the authority order or notice received, Safety Gate information, and the cooperation needed to eliminate or mitigate risk. It also requires a prior warning and a reasonable suspension period for traders that frequently offer non-compliant products, so a repeat-offender decision needs its own history and rationale.

Capture evidence before the listing changes. Screenshots alone are not enough if they omit product identifiers, trader details, quantities, affected Member States, timestamps, or the exact content that the order or notice identified.

Keep the clocks and channels separate. A market surveillance authority order, a third-party notice, a Safety Gate alert, and a Safety Business Gateway report are related, but they are different events and should not be documented as one generic ticket.

Do not invent national filing steps or fixed deadlines beyond the GPSR source text. Where the file does not contain an authority order or a notice received under the DSA notice channel, use the cited standard of acting without undue delay and keep the reason for the chosen action in the case record.