Selling toys in the EU; the rules, the tests, the traps

Directive 2009/48/EC is the specific law: essential safety requirements in Annex II, CE marking, a technical file and warnings. The GPSR (Regulation (EU) 2023/988) applies only to the aspects and risks the Directive does not cover; that is Article 2(1), second subparagraph, and it is why the two are not alternatives.

The duty sits with whoever places the toy on the EU market. If the manufacturer is outside the EU, the importer carries the manufacturer’s obligations for anything he puts his own name on (Article 8) and must in every case verify that the conformity assessment was done, that the technical documentation exists and that the toy is marked (Article 6). If it is not, a market surveillance authority can order the toy withdrawn or recalled under Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, and the marketplace takes the listing down first and asks afterwards.

Notified-body involvement is often described as following from the toy being ‘chemical’ or ‘electrical’. It does not. Article 19(2) gives internal production control to any toy fully covered by applied harmonised standards; Article 19(3) sends the toy to a notified body in four situations: no harmonised standard, standards applied only in part, a standard published with a restriction, or the manufacturer’s own judgement that the nature, design, construction or purpose of the toy needs third-party verification.

Either way the manufacturer draws up the EC declaration of conformity (Article 15), affixes the CE marking (Articles 16 and 17) and keeps the technical documentation for ten years after the toy was placed on the market (Article 21). An importer who cannot produce that file on request is the one holding the problem: the authority addresses the operator who placed the toy on the market, not the factory abroad.

The presumption of conformity in Article 13 is not general: it reaches exactly as far as the harmonised standards you applied. A laboratory report for EN 71-1, -2 and -3 says nothing about the requirements those parts do not address, and it is the gap between the report and the essential safety requirements in Annex II that a notified body or an inspector goes looking for.

Practical consequence for an importer: read what the test report covers, not what the cover page claims. A supplier who sends ‘EN 71 certificate’ without naming the parts, the sample, the age grade and the date has sent you nothing you can rely on. Ask for the accredited laboratory’s report itself, with the test parts listed, and keep it in the technical file.

Two separate legal tracks converge on the same sample. Annex II Part III of the Directive sets the toy-specific chemical requirements, including the migration limits that EN 71-3 implements and the ban on CMR substances above the generic concentration limits. REACH Annex XVII applies on top and independently: it restricts substances in articles generally, which is where the phthalate entries bite.

The obligation is the manufacturer’s, but the risk lands on the importer, because an authority tests the product on the shelf. A failed migration test is not a paperwork problem: the toys already in the warehouse cannot be sold, the ones already sold have to be recalled where a serious risk exists, and the case is published in the Safety Gate rapid alert system with your company named as the notifier or the distributor.

This is the overlap that surprises people: a toy is not exempt from the electrical and waste regimes because it is a toy. EN IEC 62115 is the harmonised standard for the safety of electric toys and is the one a notified body will look for when the toy is not fully covered by EN 71 alone.

The battery regulation attaches to whoever first makes the battery available in a member state, which for an imported toy is the importer. That means producer registration in every country you sell into, before the first sale, and it is a separate registration from packaging EPR and from WEEE. Button cells and coin cells carry their own requirement, because swallowing them is the accident the rule exists for. Selling without the registration is a national offence and the fine is the smaller half of the problem: a marketplace that cannot see your registration number will not list you.

What changes on 1 August 2030. Annex II Part III point 4 prohibits substances classified in Part 3 of Annex VI to the CLP Regulation as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction category 1A, 1B or 2; endocrine disrupting for human health category 1 or 2; specific target organ toxicity category 1, single or repeated exposure; respiratory sensitising category 1; or skin sensitising category 1A. It works through the harmonised classification in Part 3 of Annex VI, not through a supplier’s self-classification, which is a difference of thousands of substances. Point 5 prohibits the intentional use of PFAS; unintended, technically unavoidable traces from impurities or the production process remain allowed (point 7), and PFAS restrictions under REACH or the POPs Regulation take precedence (point 11). Point 6 prohibits the bisphenols listed in Part D of the appendix to Annex II. Exemptions sit in points 8 and 9, among them electronic and electrical components that are wholly inaccessible to children in normal use.

The EU declaration of conformity disappears and the digital product passport takes its place (recitals 54 and 58). Read who does what: the manufacturer creates the passport and affixes the CE marking, and the passport has to stay available for ten years after the toy is placed on the market, including in insolvency or liquidation (Article 19(2)(g)). As an importer you must verify before placing the toy on the market that the manufacturer has created a passport (Article 9(2)(c)); you do not create it yourself. You keep the unique product identifier available to the market surveillance authorities for ten years and make sure the technical documentation can be produced on request (Article 9(8)), and you must be able to name for ten years who supplied you and whom you supplied (Article 13). Put the toy on the market under your own name or trade mark and the full manufacturer obligations, passport included, become yours. The practical step now is contractual: in supply agreements running past 1 August 2030, fix that the manufacturer creates the passport, keeps it available for ten years, and delivers the PFAS and bisphenol declarations from that date.

The two roles are not the same thing and the paperwork differs. Under Article 16 GPSR there simply has to be an economic operator in the Union responsible for the tasks listed there: keeping the declaration and the technical documentation, informing the authorities, and cooperating on corrective action. That operator can be an EU manufacturer, an importer, an authorised representative or a fulfilment service provider, in that order of preference.

Under Article 5 of the Directive the authorised representative acts on a written mandate from the manufacturer and, at minimum, keeps the EC declaration of conformity and the technical documentation available for ten years. Note what a mandate cannot transfer: the obligation to draw up the technical documentation and to carry out the conformity assessment stays with the manufacturer. If you are the importer and you have no manufacturer who will sign, you are the manufacturer in law.

Two details cost importers the most money here. First, the importer’s own name and address must appear on the toy, or where that is not possible on the packaging or in a document accompanying the toy; that is Article 6(3), and it is not satisfied by the manufacturer’s address alone. Second, the warnings must be in the language the member state of sale requires, which for a pan-European listing means several languages on the same pack.

Article 11(1) requires warnings to specify appropriate user limitations in accordance with Part A of Annex V, and for the categories of toys listed in Part B the warnings set out there must be used. Article 6 puts the checking duty on you as importer: verify that the toy is accompanied by the required warnings in a language the consumer in the member state of sale can easily understand. Warnings also have to be visible before purchase, including in distance selling, so the under-three warning belongs in the online listing and not only in the box. A warning that conflicts with the intended use of the toy, such as ‘not suitable for children under three’ on a toy plainly meant for a baby, is expressly not allowed. Getting this wrong is the cheapest possible reason to have a container refused.

The legal hook is Article 22 GPSR: an online marketplace has to register in the Safety Gate portal, provide a single contact point, and act on orders from market surveillance authorities. Marketplaces manage that risk by moving it upstream, which is why the seller dashboard asks for a Responsible Person before the listing goes live rather than after a complaint.

What that means in practice: the field has to name an operator who actually exists in the EU, at an address that can receive post, and who has the documentation. A forwarding address or a name borrowed from a supplier fails the first check the authority makes. If your listing is already down, fixing the field is necessary and often not sufficient; have the declaration of conformity and the test report ready to upload in the same appeal.