Europe rewrote its product liability law for the first time since 1985. Directive (EU) 2024/2853 decides who pays when a product injures someone, and it applies to every product placed on the EU market or put into service after 9 December 2026 (source: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, article 2, paragraph 1).
The old rules mostly pointed at the manufacturer. The new rules name the importer and the authorised representative directly, remove the minimum damage amount, allow claims for destroyed data, and let a court assume a product was defective when a company will not hand over its documentation.
If you sell consumer products into the EU from outside it, this is the law that turns a compliance file from paperwork into a defence.
1. What the directive does, and when it starts to apply
Directive (EU) 2024/2853 replaces Directive 85/374/EEC. It is a civil liability law: it decides who compensates a person who is injured or whose property is damaged by a defective product. It does not create criminal penalties, and it does not replace the market surveillance rules under the GPSR. Those two run alongside each other.
It is a directive, not a regulation, so the rules that will actually be applied to you are the national laws each member state writes. Member states have until 9 December 2026 to put it in place, and the new regime applies to products placed on the market or put into service after that date (source: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, article 2, paragraph 1). Stock that was already on the EU market before that date stays under the old rules.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 8 December 2024 | Directive (EU) 2024/2853 enters into force |
| 13 December 2024 | GPSR, Regulation (EU) 2023/988, starts to apply (source: Regulation (EU) 2023/988, article 52) |
| 9 December 2026 | Member states must have transposed the directive; the new liability rules apply to products placed on the market after this date |
2. Who can be held liable, in the order the law names them
Article 8 names the parties who can be held liable, and it names them in an order. The point of that order is that an injured person in the EU always has someone inside the EU to sue.
| Who | When they are liable |
|---|---|
| The manufacturer | Always, for a defective product, and for a defective component that was integrated within its control (article 8, paragraph 1, points a and b) |
| The importer | When the manufacturer is established outside the EU (article 8, paragraph 1, point c, i) |
| The authorised representative | When the manufacturer is established outside the EU (article 8, paragraph 1, point c, ii) |
| The fulfilment service provider | Only when there is no importer in the EU and no authorised representative (article 8, paragraph 1, point c, iii) |
| Any distributor | When no EU operator from the list above can be identified, and the distributor cannot name its own supplier within one month of being asked (article 8, paragraph 3) |
| An online platform | Under the same conditions as a distributor, where the conditions in article 6(3) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 are met (article 8, paragraph 4) |
Three things in that table catch people out.
The importer and the authorised representative sit side by side, not one after the other. The law does not say the representative is a fallback for when there is no importer; that role belongs to the fulfilment service provider.
A distributor has one month to answer the question "who supplied you". Miss that window and the distributor becomes the liable party (article 8, paragraph 3). This is a documentation problem, not a legal one, and it is the cheapest thing on this page to fix.
Anyone who substantially modifies a product outside the manufacturer's control and then puts it on the market is treated as the manufacturer of that product (article 8, paragraph 2). Rebranding, rebundling, changing a power supply or adding a feature can all land you there.
Not sure which of these roles you are in for the products you sell? Send us a product page and a copy of your supplier agreement, and we will tell you where you sit in the chain. You can reach us through the contact page.
3. What counts as damage now
Article 6 lists what can be claimed: death or personal injury including medically recognised damage to psychological health, damage to or destruction of property, and destruction or corruption of data that is not used for professional purposes (source: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, article 6, paragraph 1).
Two changes matter for the size of a claim.
The lower threshold the 1985 directive applied to property damage, 500 ECU, is gone (source: Directive 85/374/EEC, article 9). A small claim is now a claim.
Financial ceilings are gone too. Member states may no longer limit or exclude an economic operator's liability towards the injured person, whether by contract or by national law (source: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, article 15). If your supplier agreement contains a liability cap, it does not bind the consumer who was hurt. It may still help you recover from your supplier, which is a different matter and worth keeping.
Property used exclusively for professional purposes is excluded, and so is the defective product itself (article 6, paragraph 1, point b). Damage to your own goods is a commercial dispute, not a product liability claim.
4. Why claims become easier to bring
Claims become easier because the directive moves part of the proof burden towards the company that holds the documentation. This is the change that gets the least attention and matters the most in practice.
A claimant still has to prove defectiveness, damage and the causal link (article 10). But a court can now order the defendant to disclose relevant evidence once the claimant has presented facts that make the claim plausible (article 9). If the defendant does not disclose, the product is presumed defective (article 10).
There are two more presumptions. The product is presumed defective where it does not comply with mandatory product safety requirements, and where the damage was caused by an obvious malfunction during reasonably foreseeable use. And where technical or scientific complexity makes proof excessively difficult, the court may presume defectiveness or a causal link if the claimant shows it is likely (article 10).
Read those together and the practical rule is simple. The company with the documentation has the advantage. The company without it starts from a presumption against itself, on top of the fact that it cannot show the product met the safety requirements in the first place.
That is why a technical file stopped being an administrative box and became the document that decides whether the presumption runs against you. If your files are thin, a product compliance check for the EU shows you where the gaps are before a court does.
5. How long you stay liable
A claim can be brought for three years, counted from the moment the injured person knew or should reasonably have known about the damage, the defectiveness and who is liable (article 16).
The right expires ten years after the product was placed on the market or put into service (article 17). For personal injury whose symptoms are slow to emerge according to medical evidence, that period runs to 25 years (article 17).
Substantially modify a product and a new expiry period starts for the modified product. Routine updates do not restart the clock.
The number to plan around is the ten years, because it decides how long you keep your files. A technical file for a product you stopped selling in 2027 is still the document you need in 2036.
6. Software, updates and connected products
Article 4 defines a product as all movables, including electricity, digital manufacturing files, raw materials and software. Software is a product in its own right, whatever way it is supplied.
For a consumer electronics importer this matters in a specific way. A firmware update that introduces a fault is not outside the scope, and a product that depends on a companion app is not either. Free and open source software developed or supplied outside a commercial activity is out of scope (article 2, paragraph 2).
If you sell anything with an app, a cloud dependency or an update mechanism, the question to ask your factory is who controls the update channel after the product leaves the warehouse, and what happens to that channel when the factory drops the model.
7. What this means if you sell into the EU from outside it
You cannot be sued in an EU court as easily as a company established there, which is exactly why the directive names an EU-based party in every scenario. The consequence is that your importer, your authorised representative, your fulfilment provider or the marketplace will carry the claim first, and will then come to you.
Expect three things to change in how they treat you.
They will ask for the technical file before they take the product on, not after. A representative that is liable under article 8 has a direct interest in what it is representing.
The supplier chain has to be on paper, because the one-month answer window in article 8, paragraph 3 is theirs to meet.
Products that are changed after they leave the factory get a harder look, because that is the fastest way for a distributor to become a manufacturer.
We act as EU authorised representative for more than 200 non-EU brands, and a product is only covered once we have received its technical file. What that service includes is set out on the EU authorised representative page.
None of that is a reason to avoid the EU market. It is a reason to have the paperwork ready before you ask someone to stand behind your product. If you are working out what the minimum setup costs, we listed it on start selling in the EU on a budget.
8. What to do before 9 December 2026
- Write down, per product line, who the manufacturer is, who the importer is, and who your authorised representative is. If any of the three is blank for a product you sell in the EU, that is the first gap.
- Check that you can name your supplier for every product within one month. That means a record you can search, not an inbox.
- Collect the technical documentation and the EU declaration of conformity per product, and store them where you can find them for ten years after the last unit was sold.
- List the products you modify after they arrive: rebranding, rebundling, a different power supply, a changed manual. Treat each of those as a product you manufacture.
- Look at the products with software, an app or an update channel and write down who controls that channel.
- Read the liability clause in your supplier agreement. It will not protect you against the injured consumer, but it decides whether you can recover anything afterwards.
- Talk to your insurer. Product liability cover written against the 1985 rules does not know about data loss or psychological harm.
9. Conclusion
The directive does not make life dramatically harder for an importer who keeps records. It does make it much harder for one who does not, because it removes the lower threshold, removes the ceilings, adds data and psychological harm to the list, and lets a court presume the worst about a company that cannot produce its file.
Three things are worth doing this year: know your role per product, be able to name your supplier within a month, and keep the technical file for ten years after the last sale.
If you want a read on where you sit in the article 8 chain for the products you actually sell, send us a product page and your supplier details through the contact page and we will map it out.
Sources
- Directive (EU) 2024/2853 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2024 on liability for defective products and repealing Council Directive 85/374/EEC. Articles 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17. OJ L, 18 November 2024.
- Council Directive 85/374/EEC of 25 July 1985 on liability for defective products, as amended.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety (GPSR), article 52.
- Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act), article 6(3).
