European Standards play a crucial role in protecting consumers by setting safety requirements for everyday products. These standards apply across a wide range of sectors and ensure that products used by or accessible to consumers even if not originally intended for them meet essential safety criteria. This also includes products provided in the context of a service.
By offering tools to support compliance with EU legislation, CEN and CENELEC standards help manufacturers meet market access requirements while ensuring consumer safety. These standards are developed in close cooperation with industry, authorities, laboratories, and consumer representatives.
A major development in this area is the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR – EU 2023/988), which entered into force in December 2024, replacing the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD 2001/95/EC). The GPSR updates the legal framework to reflect evolving consumer markets, including new challenges such as product safety obligations for online marketplaces.
Currently, 20 active CEN and CENELEC Standardization Requests support the implementation of the GPSR.
