Shopify · Selling into the EU
Selling into the EU on Shopify: the 2026 compliance checklist
Shipping to EU customers from Shopify puts you under five separate rulebooks, and none of them switch on when you enable a market. Product safety (GPSR) governs what your listing has to say. EPR governs registration and fees for packaging, electronics and batteries, country by country. PPWR adds a packaging representative from 12 August 2026. Your storefront itself can fall under the European Accessibility Act. VAT and customs sit on top. This is the order to work through them.
What Shopify actually does for you
Worth being precise about, because a lot of advice assumes the platform handles more than it does. Shopify gives you the Disclosures product metafield and metaobject entries for legally required warnings, ordinary product metafields for anything else you need to store, and Markets for country-specific storefronts and translations. That is the plumbing, and it is genuinely useful plumbing.
What it does not give you is any of the legal roles. Shopify's own GPSR documentation puts designating an EU Responsible Person on the merchant and states that Shopify does not currently offer such services directly. Nothing in Shopify registers you with a packaging scheme, files a report, appoints a representative, or tells you which of your products is missing which field.
The one-line version
Shopify gives you fields to put compliance data in. It does not decide what belongs in them, and it does not fill any of the roles the law requires.
The dates that matter
EU obligations for online sellers, 2021 to 2030
What has already landed, and what is still coming
- 16 July 2021In force
CE-marked goods need an EU-established economic operator
Article 4 of the Market Surveillance Regulation. Toys, electricals, PPE and machinery.
- 13 December 2024In force
GPSR applies in full
Responsible Person for non-EU manufacturers, plus the Article 19 information in every online offer.
- 28 June 2025In force
European Accessibility Act applies
Ecommerce is a covered service. Microenterprises are exempt from the service obligations.
- 18 August 2025In force
Batteries Regulation authorised representative
Producers selling batteries into a member state where they are not established appoint a representative there.
- 19 February 2026In force
Germany's amended Product Safety Act in force
32 administrative offences, fines from roughly €10,000 to €100,000.
- 12 August 2026Next up
PPWR: packaging registration and an authorised representative per member state
Also conformity documentation and substance limits.
- 12 August 2028Upcoming
PPWR harmonised sorting label
- 1 January 2030Upcoming
PPWR 50% empty-space cap for ecommerce packaging, plus minimum recycled content
Widely misreported as an August 2026 rule. It is not.
- 1 August 2030Upcoming
Toy Safety Regulation applies, with a mandatory digital product passport
Adopted 12 December 2025 with a 54-month transition.
Source: Regulation (EU) 2019/1020; GPSR (EU) 2023/988; Directive (EU) 2019/882; Regulation (EU) 2023/1542; PPWR (EU) 2025/40; Toy Safety Regulation (EU) 2025/2509; German ProdSG.
| Date | What applies |
|---|---|
| 16 July 2021 | CE-marked goods need an EU-established economic operator |
| 13 December 2024 | GPSR applies in full |
| 28 June 2025 | European Accessibility Act applies |
| 18 August 2025 | Batteries Regulation authorised representative |
| 19 February 2026 | Germany's amended Product Safety Act in force |
| 12 August 2026 | PPWR: packaging registration and an authorised representative per member state |
| 12 August 2028 | PPWR harmonised sorting label |
| 1 January 2030 | PPWR 50% empty-space cap for ecommerce packaging, plus minimum recycled content |
| 1 August 2030 | Toy Safety Regulation applies, with a mandatory digital product passport |
1. Product safety: GPSR
GPSR has applied since 13 December 2024. Two things matter for a Shopify store. First, if your manufacturer is not established in the EU you need an EU Responsible Person, an EU-established economic operator who takes responsibility for the product. Second, Article 19 requires four things to appear clearly and visibly in the offer itself:
- The manufacturer's name or trade mark, with both a postal and an electronic address.
- Where the manufacturer is outside the EU, the Responsible Person's name, postal address and electronic address.
- Information identifying the product, including a picture, its type and any other identifier.
- Any warning or safety information, in a language the destination country's consumers easily understand.
A footer link, a terms page or a separate compliance page does not satisfy Article 19. The full breakdown of what goes on the product versus in the listing is in GPSR labelling requirements, and the Shopify-specific mechanics are in how to add a Responsible Person to your product page.
Shopify Markets does not translate your safety text for free
If you run translated storefronts for Germany, France, Italy or Spain, the warnings and safety information have to be part of what gets translated. English-only safety text on a German storefront is a gap, and since 19 February 2026 German law says so explicitly.
2. EPR: you register per country, not per EU
Extended Producer Responsibility makes you pay for the disposal of what you put on the market: packaging, electronics, and batteries. There is no single EU registration. You register in each country you sell into, with that country's scheme, and report your volumes there. Germany is LUCID plus a dual system, France is Citeo plus an ADEME identifier, Spain is the MITECO register plus Ecoembes, Italy is CONAI.
There is no EU-wide small-seller exemption
This is the single most common mistake. A few countries have thresholds and most do not. If you ship one parcel of your own packaging to a German consumer, you are in scope in Germany. Start with do you need to register for EPR before you assume you are too small.
Costs are lower than most sellers fear and the admin is worse than they expect. We broke down real 2026 scheme rates in how much EPR actually costs. If you sell anything with a plug or a battery, WEEE and battery registration is a separate track again.
3. PPWR from 12 August 2026
The EU Packaging Regulation applies from 12 August 2026. For a non-EU seller the load-bearing part is Article 45: you appoint a packaging authorised representative, by written mandate, in each member state where you first make packaging available and are not established. That is a per-country appointment, not one for the EU.
The Commission proposed suspending that obligation in December 2025 as part of its Environmental Omnibus. It did not proceed, and Council negotiations were discontinued in June 2026. Plan on the date holding. Detail in PPWR from 12 August 2026 and the packaging authorised representative guide.
4. Your storefront: the European Accessibility Act
This one surprises people because it is not about the product at all. The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025, and ecommerce is explicitly a covered service. It reaches the storefront: navigation, forms, checkout, contrast, keyboard operation.
There is a genuine exemption, and most stores reading this will fall inside it. A microenterprise is a business with fewer than 10 people and annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million. Both conditions have to be true. Microenterprises are exempt from the service obligations, which is the part that covers your website. Two things to note: the exemption covers services, not products, and there is no grace period once you grow past the threshold.
Not something Assuro covers
We flag product and packaging obligations. Storefront accessibility is a different discipline and a different kind of vendor. We mention it because it is the item most likely to be missing from a Shopify EU checklist you find elsewhere.
5. VAT and customs
Separate from compliance, but it lands on the same orders. For consignments up to €150 sold to EU consumers, the Import One-Stop Shop lets you charge VAT at checkout and file one monthly return instead of registering in each member state. Below that threshold there was historically no customs duty. The EU has agreed to remove that €150 duty relief, with an interim handling charge on low-value parcels from 1 July 2026.
Treat this as a landed-cost and pricing question rather than a compliance one. It does not change any of the four rulebooks above, but it does change what an EU order is worth to you.
Enforcement is not theoretical
Dangerous-product alerts in the EU Safety Gate, per year
Validated alerts
Source: European Commission, Safety Gate annual reports 2022 to 2025.
| Year | Alerts |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 2,117 |
| 2023 | 3,412 |
| 2024 | 4,137 |
| 2025 | 4,671 |
In 2025 authorities validated 4,671 alerts, close to 100 a week, a 13% rise on 2024, and took a record 5,794 follow-up actions, up 35%. The Commission's eSurveillance web crawler inspected more than 1.6 million URLs and found over 20,800 offers of dangerous products. Enforcement now starts with a crawler reading listings, which is exactly where Article 19 lives.
Penalties are national. Germany's amended Product Safety Act, in force since 19 February 2026, sets out 32 administrative offences with fines from roughly €10,000 to €100,000. Italy's penalty decree proposes fines up to €150,000 for the most serious breaches. Authorities can also order a marketplace to remove your listing or block access to it, which for most sellers arrives long before any fine does.
The checklist
- An EU-established Responsible Person appointed, with a written mandate
- Their name, postal address and electronic address shown in every EU product offer
- Manufacturer name and both addresses on the product, plus a type, batch or serial identifier
- Warnings and safety information translated for each market storefront, not just English
- Packaging EPR registration in every country you ship to, with volumes reported
- WEEE and battery registration if you sell anything electrical or battery-powered
- A packaging authorised representative per member state, in place for 12 August 2026
- Accessibility assessed if you are over the microenterprise threshold
- IOSS registration if you sell consignments under €150, and pricing updated for the duty change
- One owner and a calendar for the annual EPR declarations, which are easy to miss
How Assuro helps
The list above is knowable. What is hard is knowing which of your 400 products is missing which item, and in which markets that exposes you. Assuro connects to your Shopify store, flags per product what GPSR data is absent and where a Responsible Person is not on record, tracks which EPR registrations apply per country, and keeps the deadlines. It organizes and flags. It does not certify products, act as your Responsible Person, file with a scheme, or audit your storefront.
Frequently asked questions
Does Shopify handle EU compliance for me?
No. Shopify provides metafields, the Disclosures metaobject for legally required warnings, and Markets for translated storefronts. Its own documentation states it does not offer EU Responsible Person services. Registration, appointments, filings and the content of every field are the merchant's responsibility.
Do I need to do this if I only ship a handful of orders to the EU?
For GPSR, yes. There is no volume threshold: the obligations attach to placing a product on the EU market, not to how many you sell. For EPR, a few countries have thresholds and most do not, so it has to be checked country by country.
Do I need to set up an EU company?
No. You need an EU-established contact, which is a different thing. That can be an EU importer, an authorised representative under a written mandate, or in some cases a fulfilment service provider. Setting up your own EU entity is one option, not a requirement.
Which comes first if I can only do one thing this month?
The Responsible Person and the Article 19 information in your listings. That is the item enforcement finds first, because the Commission's crawler reads product offers, and it is what gets a listing removed.
Does selling through a marketplace instead of my own store remove these duties?
No. Marketplaces carry their own obligations under GPSR and the Digital Services Act, including collecting trader information and acting on takedown orders. Those sit alongside your duties as the economic operator, they do not replace them.
Is the European Accessibility Act really about my Shopify store?
It applies to ecommerce services offered to EU consumers, so in principle yes. Microenterprises, meaning fewer than 10 people and turnover or balance sheet no higher than €2 million, are exempt from the service obligations. Both conditions must be met, and the exemption ends as soon as you exceed them.
See where your store actually stands
Connect your Shopify store and Assuro flags which products are missing GPSR and EPR data, country by country, and tracks every deadline. Free to scan, no credit card.
Check your store for free