What is EU Safety Gate (RAPEX)?

Safety Gate is how the EU spreads the word about dangerous consumer products. When an authority in one country finds an unsafe product and takes action, such as ordering a recall or stopping imports, it notifies Safety Gate. The alert reaches the other participating countries, which can then check their own markets for the same product.

The system has run since 2003. It was set up under the General Product Safety Directive 2001/95/EC as RAPEX, the Rapid Exchange of Information System, and many people still search for it by that name. Today it is governed by the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), which has applied since 13 December 2024.

The three parts of Safety Gate

1. The Safety Gate Rapid Alert System. The network that national authorities in the EU and EEA countries and the Commission use to exchange information on dangerous non-food products and the corrective measures taken (GPSR Article 25). Each country has a single contact point that checks its notifications.
2. The Safety Gate portal. The public website (Article 34). It publishes summaries of alerts, machine translated into the languages of the participating countries plus Arabic and Ukrainian, and lets consumers report accidents and safety issues in their own language.
3. The Safety Business Gateway. The portal where businesses inform authorities and consumers (Article 27). Manufacturers, importers, distributors and online marketplaces use it to report dangerous products and serious accidents.

Safety Gate does not cover food, animal feed, pharmaceuticals or medical devices. These have their own alert systems.

Safety Gate in numbers

According to the Commission's report published in March 2026:

• 4,671 alerts were notified in 2025, the highest number since 2003, 13% more than in 2024 and more than double the 2022 level.
• 5,794 follow-up actions were recorded, 35% more than the year before. These include withdrawals, recalls, border stops and removed online listings.
• Cosmetics (36%), toys (16%) and electrical appliances and equipment (11%) were the most notified product categories.
• Chemical risks caused 53% of alerts, followed by injuries (14%) and choking (9%).
• More than 1,200 online marketplaces had registered on Safety Gate by the end of 2025.

What it means for brands and manufacturers

A Safety Gate alert names the product, often with photos, brand, model and batch details, and is visible to consumers, retailers and authorities in every participating country. One national measure can lead to checks, withdrawals and listing removals across Europe.

The link to your own duties runs through the GPSR. If you find out that one of your products is dangerous, you must take corrective action, such as a product recall, and notify authorities through the Safety Business Gateway. Manufacturers must also report accidents caused by their products that led to death or serious harm to health through the same gateway (Article 20).

Online marketplaces must register on Safety Gate and act on orders to remove dangerous listings. For brands selling through marketplaces, that means a listing can disappear quickly once an alert is published.

How to prepare

1. Check Safety Gate regularly for your product categories and for similar products from competitors.
2. Know how to use the Safety Business Gateway before you need it, including who in your company submits notifications.
3. Make products identifiable. Clear model, batch and serial numbers help authorities and consumers match an alert to the right units.
4. Keep owner contact data, so you can reach affected customers directly if your product is ever the subject of an alert.
5. Watch chemical compliance closely, since chemical risks cause more alerts than any other risk type. See SVHC and RoHS.