Recall or withdraw a product
Record a corrective measure, log your Safety Business Gateway notification, publish the Article 36 recall notice and close the measure.
When a manufacturer considers a product it has placed on the market to be dangerous, Article 9(8) of the GPSR requires it to act immediately: take corrective measures, inform consumers and notify the market surveillance authorities through the Safety Business Gateway. The Recalls tab records each measure and composes its recall notice. It doesn't contact consumers or authorities for you.
Recall or withdrawal
| Measure | What it is | What the register asks for |
|---|---|---|
| Recall | Article 3(25): getting back a product that has already reached consumers. | Remedies, instructions for consumers and a recall notice (Articles 35 to 37). |
| Withdrawal | Article 3(26): stopping a product in the supply chain from being made available. | No notice and no remedy, because the products it covers haven't reached consumers. |
A withdrawal follows the same steps below, apart from publishing a notice.
Initiate the measure
- Go to Compliance › Product Safety › Recalls and click Initiate recall, whichever measure it is.
- Under Affected product, choose the Product. A measure covers one product, and a product already withdrawn from the market isn't offered. If the product has lots on record, tick each lot the measure covers under Affected production batches; if it has none, enter the Estimated units in the EU.
- Under Hazard, choose the Measure, the Hazard category and the Severity, Serious risk or Less than serious, and write the Issue description.
- Under Discovery, enter the date it was Discovered on and the Discovery source. The register takes that day as the day the product was determined dangerous.
- For a recall, tick the Remedy offered and write the Action customers should take if you know them already. Both can still change when you publish.
- Click Initiate recall.
The measure gets a reference such as REC-0001 and shows Open. Its drawer counts the days since the product was determined dangerous: the GPSR sets no number of hours, so it's elapsed time rather than a countdown. The product's drawer flags the open measure, and open measures count in the Open recalls tile of the Compliance overview.
Record the Gateway notification
Notify the market surveillance authorities through the Safety Business Gateway, which you reach from the Safety Gate Portal. Then record it: open the measure, click Record Gateway notification, enter the date you Notified on and, if the Gateway gave you one, Their reference, and click Record notification. The status becomes Notified to the Gateway.
Nothing is sent to the portal from here, and a recorded notification can't be edited.
Publish the recall notice
Article 36 sets what a recall notice contains, and the register composes it from the product and the measure: the headline Product safety recall, the product's picture, name, brand and lot or identification numbers, the hazard, what consumers should do, the remedies, a contact, and a line asking people to pass the notice on. Check that the product has a picture on file before you publish, because the notice shows only what the product's record holds.
- Open the recall and click Publish notice.
- Check the Issue description and What consumers should do, which must include an instruction to stop using the product immediately. Rewording the issue description here updates the record too.
- Under Remedies offered — Article 37(2), tick at least two of Repair, Replacement and Refund. If you tick only one, say Why only one remedy is possible: Article 37(2) allows a single remedy only where the others would be impossible or disproportionate.
- Enter a Free phone number, an Interactive online service, or both. Article 36(2)(f) requires one of them.
- Click Publish notice.
Article 36(2)(c) bars wording that plays the risk down, so publishing is refused if the issue description or the consumer instructions use "voluntary", "precautionary", "discretionary", "in rare situations" or "in specific situations", or claim that no accidents have been reported. The status becomes Notice published.
Can't be undone. A published notice can't be taken down, and it stays on your Privacy Center after the recall is closed.
What your Privacy Center shows
A published notice appears on the Product safety recalls page of your Privacy Center, at /recalls, and the home page's What we disclose section links to it while you have one. Each notice has its own page, laid out in Article 36's order. After the recall closes, the notice stays up, marked as concluded, for anyone who still has the product. Notices are shown while your Product Safety register is open and your Privacy Center is published: see Privacy Center basics.
The register publishes the notice once, in the words you enter. Article 36(2) requires a notice in the languages of the Member States where the product was made available, and Article 35(1) requires every affected consumer you can identify to be notified directly. The register does neither for you.
Close the measure
When the measure is complete, open it and click Close recall or Close withdrawal. Enter the date it was Closed on and a Closing note saying what was done, and confirm. Closing releases the lots it covered and leaves the record read-only; a closed measure can't be reopened. To export every measure, see Export products and recalls.