EU MSR Article 6 Distance Sales

Treat Article 6 as a channel-neutral availability test. A product offered through a website, marketplace listing, catalogue, app, email campaign, or other distance-sales channel is deemed made available on the EU market when the offer is targeted at end users in the Union. Website accessibility from an EU Member State is not enough by itself; the assessment is case by case.

Record the offer as EU-targeted when the facts show the economic operator directs its activities to a Member State. Commission guidance identifies indicators such as EU dispatch areas, the languages used for the offer or ordering, payment options, delivery arrangements, and acceptance of EU consumers or professional end users. No single indicator is conclusive, and physical delivery is not required before Article 6 deems a targeted offer made available. Article 6 is binding law; the Blue Guide supplies non-binding implementation guidance.

For marketplace listings, distinguish the marketplace's intermediary role from any role it separately performs as manufacturer, importer, authorised representative, or fulfilment service provider. The Article 4 guidance says Article 4 applies to products sold through online marketplaces, but marketplaces that merely intermediate third-party offers do not receive a standalone Article 4 obligation solely for that intermediary service.

For imported products, the online sale can make the product relevant to EU product rules before a customs check occurs. The Blue Guide explains that products shipped to an EU fulfilment house for swift EU delivery are in the distribution phase and are placed on the market when released for free circulation. Direct sales from outside the EU to an EU end user are treated differently for timing: the product is deemed made available for Article 6 checks before the transaction, and is placed on the market when the EU order is placed and confirmed for a specific manufactured product ready to ship. An agreement made before manufacture is complete is not necessarily placement on the market, although the targeted offer still requires the Article 6 analysis.

If the product falls within the Article 4 product legislation list, do not treat an EU-targeted online listing as ready until there is an Article 4 economic operator established in the Union. The responsible operator can be an EU manufacturer, an importer where the manufacturer is outside the Union, an authorised representative with a written Article 4 mandate, or an EU fulfilment service provider for products it handles where none of the other three exists.

The check is more than a name on a listing. The Article 4 operator must be able to verify that the EU declaration of conformity or declaration of performance and technical documentation have been drawn up, keep the declaration available for authorities, ensure technical documentation can be made available on request, provide conformity information after a reasoned authority request, inform authorities if the product presents a risk, and cooperate on corrective action.

Keep an Article 6 evidence file that lets product, legal, quality, marketplace operations, logistics, and support teams reconstruct why an offer was or was not EU-targeted. The record should connect the online facts to the responsible operator, conformity documents, import path, and authority-response contacts for the exact product version and units.

The most useful evidence is contemporaneous: live offer screenshots, exportable marketplace settings, EU checkout tests, order confirmations, logistics records, Article 4 contact-label proofs, declarations, technical-documentation access assurances, supplier or manufacturer cooperation commitments, authority correspondence, and corrective-action logs. Reopen the file when territory settings, fulfilment location, seller identity, manufacturer identity, product version, applicable legislation, warning text, or operator contact details change.