§3 My responsibilities

To understand what your responsibilities under the GPSR are, you must first determine what role you are playing for the products you handle. Under new and emerging complex business models, the same business entity can provide a variety of services. Depending on the nature of the services you are providing for a given product, you may fall under one or more of the following categories of businesses under the GPSR for that particular product (15): — if, you as a business, only provide online intermediation services for a given product, (e.g., by allowing third party offers to be listed on your interface), then for the sale of that specific product you qualify as a provider of an online marketplace and must therefore comply with the requirements of Chapter IV of the GPSR and the other provisions of the GPSR that specifically address the providers of online marketplaces. — if you also act as an economic operator for other product(s) (e.g., by offering your own branded products, acting as a distributor or importer or providing fulfilment services), here you must comply with the relevant obligations of Chapter III of the GPSR and the other provisions of the GPSR addressing economic operators, generally or specifically. Example: A company provides an online marketplace. If this company offers its own branded product on this online interface, it would be considered for these products as an economic operator(manufacturer), even if the company did not produce it itself. — if you qualify as or provide services as a responsible person (e.g., by acting as the authorised representative of a third country manufacturer or as a fulfilment service provider), you must comply with the obligations of the responsible person (see point 3.2 for more details about the responsible person). It is strongly recommended that you carefully analyse the services you offer for the products you are handling in order to determine into which business category or categories you fall for a given product. Remember that you may fall into different business categories for different products and might thus need to comply with different sets of obligations in parallel. The responsibilities described below are without prejudice and come on top of your obligations specified under other Union harmonisation legislation or other EU legislation.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07