Between Duty and Practice: The Compass for E-Commerce Regulations

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If you want to sell successfully online, you should not only keep an eye on your listings – but also on the legal framework. Packaging law, ElektroG, energy labeling or product safety: the list of obligations for sellers is constantly growing.

In this episode, everything revolves around the topic of “Regulations & Compliance.” Which laws are particularly important for you as commercial sellers? What’s the deal with EPR, Lucid ID and the new USB-C regulation? And how do you manage to sell on eBay in a legally compliant – and at the same time efficient – way?

Answers come from eBay Legal Counsel and podcast host Vincent Rek. Together with Isabell Butterwegge, he explains what you need to pay attention to in everyday business, which tools support you – and why the new online guide is a real help.

Want to sell safely? Then listen in now!

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** Chapter markers **

00:00:00 to 00:03:06: Intro
00:03:06 to 00:04:42: The central online guide for regulations
00:04:42 to 00:06:19: Which regulations are particularly relevant?
00:06:19 to 00:07:52: Extended producer responsibility (EPR)
00:07:52 to 00:11:54: Packaging law, Lucid ID and Lizenzero
00:11:54 to 00:12:59: eBay business consulting
00:12:59 to 00:15:24: The electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) law
00:15:24 to 00:22:57: Energy efficiency labeling, EPREL and USB-C
00:22:57 to 00:23:55: Note on the product safety regulation (GPSR)
00:23:55 to 00:25:17: HazMat - hazardous substances in online retail
00:25:17 to 00:26:39: Outro

Isabell: Regulations and laws are admittedly sometimes pretty dry and complicated, but they’re still extremely important for online sellers. Especially in the areas of environmental protection and product safety, there seem to be more and more requirements to keep in mind. And that’s exactly why we had Vincent Rek in the studio with us today. You already know Vincent as a podcast host, and today he gave us an overview of current regulations, such as upcoming changes to EEK or an overview of the Packaging Act. We also talk about the online guide that we’ve recently made available to you so that we can help you navigate the regulations jungle better. So this episode gives you quite a few answers so that you can sell on eBay not only successfully, but also compliantly. It’s worth a listen.

Vincent: Yes, so that can of course lead to sanctions and it can also mean that listings are no longer visible to buyers. And if you’re now asking yourself: Well, how can I check whether this information is correct? If you have the energy label, there’s a QR code on it that you can scan and check accordingly. But there is also the so-called EPREL database, or the European Product Registry for Energy Labeling database, where in many cases you can also check this.

Isabell: Hello and welcome to Alles top. Gerne wieder! - the eBay podcast about retail and e-commerce. My name is Isabell Butterwegge and today we’ve brought you a particularly important topic as sellers: regulations and compliance. Whether it’s the Packaging Act, product safety or the battery regulation, there are many legal requirements and it can be hard to keep track. All the more important is staying informed. And that’s exactly what my colleague Vincent Rek is here for today. He’ll guide us through the most important regulations and explain how you as sellers on eBay can deal with them. And you already know Vincent, because normally he doesn’t sit here as a guest on the podcast, but on the other side of the table. But he’s also Legal Counsel at eBay and therefore an expert in legal matters on the marketplace, and so first of all hi and welcome, Vincent.

Vincent: Yes, thank you very much, Isabell. Great to be here.

Isabell: Before we really get started with the content, let’s warm up and get into it first, Vincent. The listeners know what field you work in. But is there a fun fact about you that’s not in your bio?

Vincent: Yes, before I became a serious and matter-of-fact office hero or lawyer, I used to be a passionate skateboarder and also competed in contests.

Isabell: Can you still do it?

Vincent: I can still do it, just not as well as before. But still. So, actually, if you saw pictures of me from back then, you wouldn’t necessarily guess that I’d one day become a lawyer.

Isabell: But today we don’t want to talk about you and your skateboard, but about regulations, especially at eBay. And we recently published a new landing page that actually gives a perfect overview of all relevant regulations and laws. So basically all the topics we’re talking about today, too. Vincent, what’s the deal with this new page?

Vincent: Yes, we built a central online guide to help sellers find the legal regulations relevant to them. We have help pages on a wide variety of laws and regulations, and also for the different countries where we have marketplaces. And this online guide helps sellers find those help pages. It works like this: I can enter that I want to sell to France, for example, and then I’m shown all the help pages that are relevant for me when I sell to France. So all our help pages, whether they’re about tax topics, environmental regulations or other things. And those are bundled centrally there, and then you can just click through them there once.

Isabell: Okay, so that means I no longer have to laboriously search the help page for specific regulations, but can simply specify that I’m a German seller selling to France, and everything that comes into question for this use case is then sorted for me once and displayed by regulations.

Vincent: Exactly. Exactly. And it’s also sorted according to whether it’s about consumer protection or tax topics, for example.

Isabell: That definitely sounds super exciting. I’d say we’ll also put the link to this new landing page directly in the show notes. And today we’re also talking about some regulations that affect eBay sellers. And I think it’s important to clarify at the outset that these aren’t regulations that eBay just makes up, but rather ones we as a marketplace are obliged to implement, or at least we strive to support sellers as much as possible.

Vincent: Exactly. Exactly. As a marketplace, we have to enable our sellers to comply with these laws and these regulations. That’s just the way it is, and that’s why we want to provide as much support as possible.

Isabell: Which regulations are particularly relevant right now?

Vincent: At the moment, you could basically say there are two groups of regulations that are particularly important. On the one hand, I’d call them environmental regulations. More and more is coming out there right now, whether it’s greenwashing topics or, as we’ll talk about later, the so-called extended producer responsibility. There’s simply more and more of it and they’re also... Well, I don’t think we need to go into detail there. Of course, super current and relevant. In addition, most of you have probably already heard of the product safety regulation. Product safety in general: regulations on this are of course also super relevant. It’s a special concern of the EU and the respective authorities at the national level that only safe products are actually in circulation and that consumers are also informed accordingly.

Isabell: So the regulations often simply aim to better protect consumers in general, inform them, and prevent further harm to the environment. You just mentioned extended producer responsibility. We also often refer to it very internally as EPR, or Extended Producer Responsibility. What exactly is that?

Vincent: Yes, the term is initially a bit, I’d say, ambiguous or can simply be misunderstood. Because it’s about obligations that don’t just affect manufacturers, but can also affect sellers, i.e. online sellers, on eBay. In summary, one can say that it’s about various regulations that revolve around waste disposal. So it really is about regulating the disposal of products, and accordingly one can say these are extended obligations, because this doesn’t actually directly concern the sale, but also the disposal of sold products.

Isabell: And what kind of products can I imagine under that?

Vincent: If we’re talking about the Packaging Act, for example, this doesn’t apply at any specific product level or category level, but rather it’s really about whether I use packaging to sell my products, which of course every online seller does.

Isabell: Okay, so various regulations fall under this extended producer responsibility, including the Packaging Act. Did I understand that correctly?

Vincent: Exactly. Exactly.

Isabell: E-commerce generally involves a lot of shipping, and packaging is of course a huge topic there. What exactly does the Packaging Act mean?

Vincent: Yes, the Packaging Act is super relevant in online retail. You can actually guess that because of course anything sold on eBay has to be packaged. Important here too: when I talk about packaging, I’m not just talking about the box, but also, for example, filling material or air cushions, etc. That all counts as packaging too. The Packaging Act really applies to all packaging, all packaging materials that ultimately end up with the German consumer and have to be disposed of.

Isabell: So everything I send with my product to the end consumer is affected by the Packaging Act. And what exactly do I need to do to be compliant here?

Vincent: Broadly speaking, there are two really key steps. On the one hand, sellers have to be licensed with a so-called dual system; at eBay we work closely with our partner Lizenzero. We also have a help page for that. We can definitely put that in the show notes again, where it explains in detail what steps need to be taken there. This dual system specifically takes care of the take-back and recycling of packaging waste.

Isabell: So I register with this dual system or get this license. But now my product with the packaging is with the end consumer, with the consumers. Once I’ve shipped it, am I now obliged to ensure that it’s properly recycled, because I no longer have any control over it?

Vincent: It’s the case that the dual system in our case, via Lizenzero, takes care of recycling and taking back packaging waste. If I register with Lizenzero, that basically involves four steps. And the most important step here is that I specify my packaging quantities, i.e. by type and also per year. For example, for 2024, four kilograms of aluminum.

Isabell: I have to provide a forecast correctly. Exactly. Okay.

Vincent: Exactly. And I also have to pay. So this licensing, this license that I buy, is not free. I pay a license fee. And I pay that so that this dual system then takes care of the return and recycling of the packaging waste.

Isabell: That’s super interesting. And then, when it comes to packaging, we also have a Lucid ID. I’ve honestly only ever heard about that. What’s the deal with it? Does it belong to this?

Vincent: Exactly, that’s basically the second step. I start by going to our help page, then go to licensing. There I have to complete the four steps to acquire a license through the dual system. In a second step, I then also need a so-called Lucid ID. The Lucid ID comes from the so-called Central Packaging Register. And in Germany that’s the public body that basically monitors compliance with the Packaging Act. And here, sellers also have to register, stating their dual system. And if they’ve done that successfully, they then receive a so-called Lucid ID. And they then also have to store this Lucid ID with us, i.e. with us on the marketplace.

Isabell: I think there’s a separate field for that in the eBay account where you can store it under my details or something like that.

Vincent: Exactly, exactly. Under personal data and data protection there’s an option for company details and there you’ll find add Lucid number or Lucid ID.

Isabell: Okay, so that means I register with both Lizenzero and the Central Packaging Register, store my Lucid ID in my eBay account, and make sure that my license fees are paid according to my packaging volume. Did I understand that correctly?

Vincent: Exactly. Exactly.

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Isabell: You just said that the Packaging Act is something that affects every eBay seller. But there are also a few laws that are category-specific. And especially in the electronics sector, there are currently quite a few laws. What current laws are important there right now?

Vincent: Very well known and very important is the so-called Electrical and Electronic Equipment Act, abbreviated EEE Act. Yes, the name says it all. It really is about certain electrical or electronic devices. We also have a great help page on this, which explains quite well which ones are in scope here. Just as an example, lamps, for example, are covered by the EEE - sorry, by the EEE Act.

Isabell: And what exactly does the law say?

Vincent: The law basically says that sellers always have to check, if I have a product that falls under this law. Let’s take a lamp as an example. Is there a so-called WEEE number for this product? Quite a mouthful. I think that’s why we’ll talk about the registration number from now on.

Isabell: I think that’s great.

Vincent: Yes, this registration or registration number is necessary to organize the take-back and disposal of the device. That’s why this also falls under the area of extended producer responsibility. And just a quick note here: what’s the equivalent of the Central Packaging Register? Here it’s the so-called Stiftung Elektro Altgeräteregister, abbreviated EAR, where the products are registered.

Isabell: If I sell these products, then I have to take care of both my Lucid ID and the registration number under the electronics law or the Electrical and Electronic Equipment Act.

Vincent: Exactly. Exactly. What I, as a seller, have to do is check: is the product I have now, the electrical product, the lamp for example, already registered this year? You can also look that up.

Isabell: Okay. And I can also carry out the registration via EAR, at Stiftung EAR, right?

Vincent: Yes, exactly.

Isabell: Okay. But the registration itself doesn’t say anything yet about the energy consumption of a product. If I’m not mistaken, there’s also a special regulation for that. Can you walk us through this labeling again?

Vincent: So, regarding energy consumption labeling or energy efficiency labeling, there are various names and also various regulations related to it. That’s something different again. It’s no longer part of the area of extended producer responsibility, but it’s still very, very important for eBay sellers. It’s about certain products having to display information regarding energy efficiency. And this is shown in the form of a label. Or we often call it a so-called energy label and a so-called product information sheet.

Isabell: Exactly, you’re already familiar with these labels from offline retail too. If I’m not mistaken, they’re often stuck right onto TVs when you go through Saturn, MediaMarkt or similar stores.

Vincent: Exactly, exactly, I think people know those labels from every bigger electronics store.

Isabell: For which products are they required? It’s probably not just TVs.

Vincent: Yes, you could say that in general it applies to large household appliances, i.e. TVs, as you already said, but of course also refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, air conditioners. But also lighting products. So we talked about lamps earlier, for example lamps too. And very important: it also applies to tires.

Isabell: And what do sellers have to do when they sell these products?

Vincent: I have to store various pieces of information in the listing flow. One of them is the so-called energy efficiency range. It indicates the scale of the energy efficiency classes, for example A to G. Again, we know that from these labels.

Isabell: You can enter that directly in the item specifics, right?

Vincent: Exactly. And then I also have to specify the actual energy efficiency class of this product, for example B. If I now have a scale from A to G, then I also have to provide the energy label. Yes, so this is the familiar label we know, because it also shows important performance data, such as water consumption for a washing machine or noise level for a refrigerator. And then I also have to provide the product information sheet. That’s a technical document containing the product specifications regarding energy and performance.

Isabell: Energy consumption labeling hasn’t only existed since yesterday. Has anything changed recently? Yes.

Vincent: And quite a bit is coming up soon. Okay, from June 20 it will be necessary to specify the information on energy consumption labeling for smartphones and tablets as well.

Isabell: Interesting.

Vincent: And what will apply a little later, from July 1, 2025, is that the energy efficiency class of tumble dryers will change from the current class A+++ to a new class from A to G. And that of course means that you may have to make adjustments to your listings.

Isabell: And what happens if the energy efficiency information in my listing is missing or then becomes incorrect because of such a change?

Vincent: Yes, that can of course lead to sanctions and it can also mean that listings are no longer visible to buyers. And if you’re wondering how can I check whether this information is correct? If you have the energy label, there’s a QR code on it that you can scan and check accordingly. But there is also the so-called EPREL database, or the European Product Registry for Energy Labeling database, where in many cases you can also check this. We’ll link that in the show notes again too.

Isabell: You mean the database?

Vincent: Yes, exactly.

Isabell: Good,

Vincent: And alternatively, of course. If contact details are available, you can also contact the supplier or the manufacturer.

Isabell: You just said that the energy efficiency label will soon also be required for smartphones and tablets. What about chargers for exactly these products? A lot has happened there in recent months too. You’ve probably noticed that a lot has been switched to USB-C. Is that also related to regulations?

Vincent: Exactly. Yes, that’s also related to regulations again. There was a directive that most member states also implemented, if not all, which, so to speak, was intended to harmonize chargers for portable electronic devices. And this is basically also meant to reduce electronic waste by not having to include a charger every time. This affects products that were first placed on the market in the EU on December 28 last year, i.e. sold. And as I said, basically you can say these are portable electronic devices, for example tablets, headphones, portable video game consoles. We also have a help page here again where we’ve listed this exactly. And here sellers are basically subject to three types of obligations. You could say.

Isabell: What are they?

Vincent: On the one hand, they have to make sure that products falling under this regulation only have a USB-C port. And I can no longer sell a product that doesn’t have a USB-C port in the EU if it falls under this regulation. In addition, if I sell a product that comes with or was delivered with a charger, I must generally also offer the consumer the option to buy this device without a charger.

Isabell: I actually think that’s very practical, and of course charging cables pile up at home too.

Vincent: Exactly. And that’s how electronic waste is meant to be minimized, so that fewer unnecessary chargers are lying around. In addition, there are also specific information obligations. Basically two of them. On the one hand, a pictogram that shows whether the product comes with or without a charger. You can also specify this in the listing flow with us. And then there’s also a specific label. It indicates the charging capacity and also whether the so-called fast charging protocol is supported.

Isabell: Yes, dear listeners, we’re slowly approaching the end of the episode. We’ve talked about several regulations now, but admittedly we’ve only scratched the surface. If there’s a topic that we absolutely should cover as part of this podcast and maybe invite you back as a guest for, then please let us know. Feel free to contact us via the eBay Community or one of our social media channels. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook as eBay for Business Deutschland.

Isabell: There’s another area, namely the topic of product safety. You were already a guest on the podcast with us once and explained that to us in detail. There’s a whole episode on the whole GPSR topic. Can you sum that up for us in one sentence? And then we’d link the episode in the show notes again for those who want to go deeper.

Vincent: Yes, very gladly. So I think the most important thing to take away here is that the GPSR, or the General Product Safety Regulation, introduced certain information obligations in online retail. For example, that I have to provide the manufacturer and the manufacturer’s contact details for my products. And sellers must make sure that they comply with these information obligations and provide them in their product listing.

Isabell: Product safety also includes hazardous materials or products containing hazardous substances. What should I keep in mind if I want to sell such products?

Vincent: Yes, we have a very good help page on this, which we’ll also link again. In principle, there are really two things you should do in online retail on eBay. On the one hand, you should check whether the product I’m currently selling contains no prohibited ingredients, for example according to the so-called CLP regulation. If that is the case, then I simply can’t sell it. And in a second step, if I’ve done that and found that, okay, there are no prohibited ingredients in it, then I have to check whether there might be specific labeling requirements, i.e. again information obligations, for this product?

Isabell: Those are pictograms, right?

Vincent: Exactly. Exactly. I think one thing we all know pretty well is, for example, the pictogram with the flame symbol. Something like that. Because it may be that I have a product that doesn’t contain any prohibited ingredient, but it still contains ingredients or materials that require specific information for consumers. For example, by displaying a specific pictogram in online retail.

Isabell: Yes Vincent, at this point a big thank you for breaking down all these complex topics in such an understandable way for us. Of course, we’ve only discussed a selection of regulations, and you’ve mentioned several times that we’ll link help pages in the show notes, and we will do that. I’d also like to draw attention again to the online guide you described at the beginning, which gives a broader overview of the regulations that could affect me when I sell as a seller in Germany. And with that, we’ve already reached the end of our episode. We still have one recurring element that I’d like to go through with you. Please complete the following sentence. Are you ready?

Vincent: Yes.

Isabell: If I were an eBay seller, I would ... sell.

Vincent: So if I were an eBay seller, I would definitely sell car tires. As we know, that works pretty well with us.

Isabell: You’re right. Yes, and that was our overview of the most important regulations that eBay sellers should keep an eye on. We hope you feel a little better informed so you can continue to sell safely and sustainably on eBay. And thank you again for the great insights, and of course thank you all for listening. See you next time. Bye.

Vincent: Bye.