A product injures someone in Europe. The manufacturer is in China and has no European establishment. European law does not leave the victim without a defendant: it designates one, by working down a list until it finds someone reachable.
The order of the chain
- The EU importer — the party that brought the goods in.
- The authorised representative, where the manufacturer appointed one.
- The fulfilment service provider — the warehouse or logistics operator holding and dispatching the stock.
- The distributor, or in defined circumstances the online platform, when none of the above can be identified.
Read that list from your customer's point of view and their behaviour makes sense. Your European importer is first in line for a liability created by a product they did not design. Every indemnity clause, every insurance certificate request, every demand for your technical file comes from that single fact.
It is liability without fault
The claimant does not have to prove negligence. They have to show the product was defective and that the defect caused the damage. Doing everything correctly is not a defence in itself — which is why the documentation matters: it is what allows a defendant to show the defect lay elsewhere.
Software is now a product
The European regime has been rewritten to cover software, including embedded software and the digital services a product depends on. A connected device whose firmware creates a hazard is a defective product, and an update that introduces the hazard can be the defect. For any exporter selling connected hardware, this is the change that should be read closely.
The new text also lengthens the window for damage that appears late, and eases the claimant's burden of proof in certain cases. It applies to products placed on the market after the national transposition takes effect; the previous regime continues to govern what was sold before. Several member states, France included, were still working through transposition at the time of writing — so the practical answer to “which rules apply to this shipment” depends on when it went out.
What a European partner actually wants to hear is not that your product is safe. It is that if something goes wrong, you will be reachable, solvent and cooperative. Product liability insurance valid in Europe, and a named contact, do more for a negotiation than another test report.
Where to read it yourself
Official pages, opened and checked on 15 October 2026. Where a rule changes, these are the addresses that change with it — this article does not.