GPSR for Apparel: Who Is Responsible for a Garment Sold in the EU?

Two questions arrive together whenever a brand starts selling into the EU. Does this regulation apply to clothing, and who exactly is on the hook? The first has a reasonably short answer. The second does not, because the Regulation assigns obligations by role, and roles are determined by the facts of the arrangement rather than by whose logo is on the label or who paid the freight.

Agree who is responsible for the product assessment and documentation before production. The applicable legal role depends on how the product is supplied and placed on the market.

Does it apply to clothing?

The General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988 has applied since 13 December 2024. It is a general safety framework for consumer products placed or made available on the EU market, and ordinary consumer clothing can fall within it. That is the short answer.

The longer answer is that it is a general framework rather than the only law touching a garment. Several regimes apply at once and they answer different questions, which is a useful thing to understand before reading anything else about compliance.

There is no GPSR certificate, and no CE mark for ordinary clothing

This correction belongs early, because the misconception costs buyers real money. Brands routinely ask a factory to send the GPSR certificate. There is no such document for ordinary apparel, and a supplier producing one is selling a private piece of paper rather than an EU credential.

• The Regulation does not introduce CE marking. CE applies where EU harmonisation legislation requires it, and affixing it to a product outside that scope is not permitted. Ordinary fashion apparel should not be presented as CE marked because this Regulation applies to it.
• It does not require an EU declaration of conformity. The declaration of conformity is a CE-marking concept and belongs to the harmonised regimes, not to general product safety.
• There is no EU-issued certificate attesting general product safety for a garment. What exists is obligations, assessment, documentation, identification, an EU-established responsible operator, and action when something goes wrong.
• GPSR compliant is not a credential anyone grants. It is a description of whether obligations have been met, which is a matter of evidence rather than of a certificate on file.

What a buyer should be asking a factory for is production-side evidence that supports the assessment, not a certificate. That is the subject of product safety documentation.

The roles, and how they are decided

The Regulation places different obligations on different economic operators. The terms are legal definitions rather than descriptions of what a company calls itself, which is why a business can be commercially a manufacturer and occupy a different role here, or the reverse. They are also specific to this Regulation: other regimes define their own roles in their own words, and producer status for textile end-of-life obligations is worked out from a different definition entirely.

Two things follow immediately, and both are worth stating because both are commonly got wrong in sourcing conversations.

Role-assessment questions, not a legal determination. Working through them tells you what to ask a lawyer; it does not replace asking one.

Supply arrangements differ, and the roles follow the arrangement. No role can be read off a chain diagram, and neither of these is the standard structure.

Substantial modification

A party other than the manufacturer who substantially modifies a product can be deemed the manufacturer for the aspects affected. In apparel this comes up around post-production alteration, re-decoration and repackaging arrangements. What counts as substantial turns on whether the modification affects the product's safety and on the Regulation's own criteria, and this guide does not offer a threshold, a checklist claiming that changing a label is or is not substantial would be exactly the kind of invented test that gets a brand into trouble.

The EU-established responsible economic operator

Article 16 is a provision that often needs solving before a first shipment rather than after it. A product may be placed on the EU market only where there is an economic operator established in the Union responsible for the tasks set out there, providing market surveillance authorities with someone to deal with, and carrying out specified checks in relation to the product.

The Regulation calls this operator the responsible person: Article 16 is headed accordingly, and the distance-sales provisions refer to the responsible person within the meaning of Article 16(1). It is worth knowing that other EU regimes use the same phrase for something different, so the term is precise here and ambiguous in general.

Where that operator exists, its identification and contact details have to be indicated on the product, or on its packaging, the parcel or an accompanying document. Which of those locations is used is a practical decision within what the Regulation allows, and it interacts with the label and pack-out work covered in labels and packaging and pack-out specification.

Identification and traceability

Traceability under this framework is not a technology requirement. It is the ability to connect a product to the parties responsible for it and to identify the product itself, so that a problem can be traced and acted on.

• Manufacturer identification. Name, registered trade name or trademark, together with a postal address and an electronic address at which the manufacturer can be contacted.
• The Article 16 operator's details, where the manufacturer is not established in the EU.
• Product identification. The Regulation allows a type, batch or serial number, or another element enabling identification. It does not require a serial number on every garment, which matters a great deal in apparel, where a style and batch reference is usually the workable answer.
• Records of the chain. Economic operators need to be able to identify who supplied them and to whom they supplied.

Where the information physically sits is a specification decision with real consequences for the label set and the packing, and it is not automatically the care label. A care label is designed and licensed for care information, and the fact that a garment already carries one does not make it the correct or the only place for safety and traceability information.

Selling online is a second obligation

Where a product is offered at a distance, the offer itself has to carry information. This is separate from what accompanies the physical product, and a listing does not discharge the product obligation any more than a compliant label discharges the listing one.

The physical product and the online offer are separate obligations. Where exactly information sits on the product is a specification decision within what the Regulation permits.

In outline, a distance-sale offer has to clearly and visibly indicate the manufacturer's name, registered trade name or trademark and its postal and electronic contact address; the same details for the Article 16 responsible economic operator where the manufacturer is not EU-established; an element enabling the product to be identified, including a picture of it; and any warning or safety information required, in the relevant language. Online marketplaces have obligations of their own, which are outside this guide.

Two practical consequences for a brand. A product page built purely as marketing will not satisfy this, and the information has to be visible in the offer rather than buried in a policy page. And if you sell through several channels, each offer carries the obligation, not just your own site.

Warnings, instructions and language

Safety information and instructions have to accompany a product where they are necessary for its safe use. Two things follow that buyers regularly get wrong in both directions.

• Not every garment needs a warning. Warnings follow from identified risks. Adding generic safety text to a plain t-shirt is not compliance; it is noise that makes real warnings easier to ignore.
• Warnings do not substitute for safe design. Where a risk can be designed out, labelling around it is the weaker answer.
• Language is determined by the Member State. The requirement is that consumers can easily understand the information in the market concerned. It is not that every product carries all EU languages, and it is not that English is always sufficient.

When something is wrong

Post-market obligations are the half of this framework that buyers often think about least, because they are the part that runs after the goods have been paid for and shipped.

Withdrawal and recall are not the same measure

A recall is also not a commercial return, an exchange or a warranty claim. Those are contractual arrangements between a seller and a customer. A recall is a safety measure with its own requirements, including binding requirements for what the recall notice must contain, and a notice in the language or languages of the Member States where the product was made available.

Where consumers are offered remedies in a recall, the Regulation requires effective, cost-free and timely remedies, with a choice of at least two of repair, replacement or an adequate refund, except where offering a choice of two would be impossible or disproportionate. A consumer retains an entitlement to a refund where repair or replacement is not provided within a reasonable time.

Where notifications go

Being a dangerous product also matters outside this Regulation: it is one of the grounds on which unsold stock may lawfully be destroyed under the EU rules on destroying unsold apparel. Two systems get confused because they share a name and a portal. The Safety Business Gateway is the business-facing channel through which economic operators notify authorities about dangerous products and accidents. Safety Gate is the EU rapid alert system through which authorities exchange alerts and inform the public. Businesses notify into the first; the second is what the market sees.

A brand that has never thought about this before its first EU shipment should at least know which party in its chain would make such a notification, and how a signal reaching the factory would reach that party. That is a supply-chain question rather than a legal one, and it is answerable in an afternoon.

What none of this replaces

Because compliance documents accumulate, it is worth being explicit about what each one does not do.

• Chemical test reports do not establish product safety generally. They evidence one part of it. What they do prove is covered in chemical test reports, and the requirements behind them in chemical compliance.
• Correct fibre composition labelling does not establish product safety. It answers a different legal question, covered in EU labelling compliance.
• A correct pack-out does not establish product safety, though it is where some required information physically ends up. See pack-out specification.
• An inspection report does not establish product safety. It records whether goods match what was approved.
• Material certifications do not establish product safety. They evidence scheme criteria, covered in certified materials.

What a brand should settle before the first EU shipment

Manufacturing outside the EU does not remove any of this. Goods made in Türkiye and sold to EU consumers are subject to the requirements that attach to placing a product on the EU market, and the practical question is which party in the chain carries which of them. What that means for sourcing from Türkiye specifically is set out in manufacturing in Türkiye.