22.01/2024 Update: BikeBiz has been informed by Irene McAleese, co-founder of See.Sense, that the “Department for Business and Trade are holding an information session on Friday, January 24, 2025, which may be useful for businesses in the cycling industry to attend and ask questions.”
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Last week BikeBiz published the article ‘GPSR: Are you compliant with new European Union regulation?‘ which explored the experience of Martin Shepherd, GM of Reynolds Technology, in the lead-up to the Friday, 13 December 2024 implementation date for new EU regulation – “General Product Safety Regulation, (which) replaces the General Product Safety Directive, and ushers in a new era of consumer protection.”
This week BikeBiz has received communication from, Annick Roetynck, managing director of LEVA-EU – “trade association in Europe that works exclusively for light electric vehicles.” Roetynck outlines a number of points raised in the original feature – which go some way to confirming, for UK-based businesses, the lack of UK-sourced, readily available, information in the lead-up to Friday, 13 December, 2024.
Here we publish sections of the communication shared with BikeBiz, as means to highlight key points of clarification.
“GPSR is merely an update of the General Product Safety Directive, introduced in 2001, while product safety legislation has been in place in the EU since 1992.
“The General Product Safety Regulation is only applicable to products for which there is no other specific safety legislation, i.e. in our sector to conventional bicycles…. some LEVs come under Regulation 168/2013, those excluded from that Regulation come under the Machinery Directive, soon to be replaced by the Machinery Regulation.
“We would appreciate it if Bikebiz would publish a rectification, where ‘nominated person’ is in fact an ‘authorised representative”‘ a concept generally introduced into EU legislation in the eighties (as part of) the existence of a system which is meant to contribute to market surveillance.”
Conclusion
In the instance where Reynolds Technology GM Martin Shepherd made enquires to a number of official UK sources –
- The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
- Birmingham Chambers of Commerce
- The Birmingham and Solihull Export Support Programme
– a gap in UK knowledge clearly existed (exists), where a UK government department, and two UK trade bodies, were not been able, in a timely fashion, to support enquiries from a UK business.
Text featured at the foot of the original article is quoted directly from the European Commission website, as well as providing a clear link to the source of further EU advice on the new – as of Friday, 13 December 2024 – regulation. This was published by the European Commission on Monday, 6 January 2025, under the title “EU’s General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR): A New Era of Consumer Protection”.
BikeBiz is grateful to the LEVA-EU for contacting the publication, outlining information invaluable to any UK bicycle industry business trading with, and selling into, the EU.
