In this legal bulletin, we will address for the first time the new EU regulation on general product safety. We remind that, unlike EU directives, which require implementation into national law, regulations have direct effect in the territory of the Czech Republic (meaning that the adoption of an implementing act is not required). The Regulation on General Product Safety entered into force in May 2023 and takes effect on 13 December 2024. On this date, the existing legal framework represented by Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety, which is transposed into Czech law by Act No. 102/2001 Coll., on general product safety, as amended, will therefore be replaced.

The regulation on general product safety may affect online traders in several roles, particularly in the position of importer or distributor. However, in this legal bulletin we will focus only on those obligations which will arise from the regulation generally for all entities engaged in distance selling (including online traders). Recital 20 of the regulation states in relation to this segment that “Distance selling, including online sales, should also fall within the scope of this Regulation. Online sales are growing continuously and steadily and are leading to the emergence of new business models, new product safety challenges and new market actors, such as providers of online marketplaces.” We will then address the obligations set out in the regulation for operators of online marketplaces in a future bulletin. Recital 21 of the regulation then adds to this issue: “Where a product is offered for sale online or by other means of distance selling, it should be considered to be made available on the market if the offer for sale is targeted at consumers in the Union.” This means that the obligations under the regulation in this area should also be fulfilled by traders not established in the European Union if their offer is targeted at consumers located within the EU.

The information obligations of “economic operators making products available on the market online or by other means of distance selling” are governed by Article 19 of the regulation. First, there is an obligation to provide information regarding the manufacturer of the product offered, specifically “the name, registered trade name or registered trade mark of the manufacturer and the postal and electronic address at which the manufacturer can be contacted.” If the manufacturer is not established in the EU, it is necessary to provide the name and postal and electronic address of the responsible person. A non-established manufacturer is obliged to appoint such a responsible person in the EU.

The second area of information obligations for traders relates to the product offered itself. In this regard, the trader will be obliged to provide “data enabling the identification of the product, including its image and type and any other product identifiers”. It will also be necessary, where applicable, for the trader to publish “warning or safety information to be affixed to the product or its packaging or indicated in an accompanying document thereto in accordance with this Regulation or relevant Union harmonisation legislation. This information must be provided “in a language which is easily understood by consumers and which is determined by the Member State in which the product is made available on the market.” This means that it will not be sufficient if warning information appears in the product packaging, but it will be necessary to display it before the purchase of the goods.

All the aforementioned information obligations shall be fulfilled by traders “clearly and visibly”, and within the offer of goods (we assume via the website).

Josef Aujezdsky

This text was originally prepared by the law firm Mašek, Kočí, Aujezdský in cooperation with the Association for Electronic Commerce (APEK) as legal bulletin No. 02/2024 intended for members of this association.

This text was translated from Czech to English using an AI translator.