The EU Just Gave Every Shop 16 Days To Print A New Poster

From 27 September, a new EU rule requires every shop that sells to consumers, in a store or online, to carry a specific, government-designed notice about the statutory 2-year guarantee. The wording, size and colours are all fixed, right down to a QR code you have to include.

That's the headline. The rule behind it lands on every shop in the EU with a till or a checkout page, not just the chains big enough to already have someone reading EU regulations for a living.

What's Actually Changing

The rule comes from the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, backed by an implementing regulation the European Commission finalised a year ago that spells out exactly what the notice has to look like. Text, colours, size, QR code: none of it is up to you.

The notice tells shoppers they're entitled to at least 2 years of legal guarantee on anything they buy, with a QR code linking to an EU page that explains their rights in their own language. In a physical shop, it needs to be at least A4 and can run in black and white. Online, it has to be in colour.

There's a second, separate label too. If a manufacturer voluntarily offers a durability guarantee longer than 2 years, free of charge, covering the whole product, that gets its own EU-designed label, called GARAN. That one's only mandatory when a guarantee like that actually exists. Most small shops will never touch it. Every shop deals with the first one.

There's no grace period. Stock already sitting on your shelf isn't exempt, and neither is a webshop that hasn't updated its templates yet.

Why It Lands Hardest On Small Shops

A retailer with a compliance team already has this sorted, most likely since the design rules were published a year ago. A shop with 4 people on staff doesn't have anyone whose job is tracking EU directives. The owner finds out from a supplier newsletter or a Facebook group, weeks before the deadline, the same way most of us find out about these things.

The exposure isn't small either. In Germany especially, competitors and consumer groups can sue over exactly this kind of technicality under unfair competition law. It's practically its own industry there: people scan small business websites looking for missing legal notices, then send a demand letter. This gives them one more thing to look for.

It also lands on whoever's actually on the shop floor. Someone has to notice the poster's gone up, answer the customer who scans the QR code mid-purchase, and know the difference between the guarantee that's automatic by law and the manufacturer's guarantee that isn't. More often than not, it's whoever's working the till on a Tuesday afternoon who answers for it, not the owner.

My Honest Take

I don't mind the idea itself. Most shoppers have no idea they're owed 2 years of guarantee by law, whatever the receipt says. A clear, standard notice fixes that, and a shopper who knows their rights is good news for the shops actually honouring them.

What bothers me is the shape of the rollout. Whoever drafted this never had to explain to a customer why the poster went up on the 26th instead of the 25th. The compliance cost is flat per shop, so as a share of anything that matters, revenue, staff time, attention, it lands heaviest on the smallest ones. That's been true of nearly every consumer protection rule the EU has passed this year.

Sixteen days is plenty of time to print a poster and find a wall for it. Handle it this week, before it turns into a scramble on the 26th.

Sources: Noerr — New labelling obligations for commercial guarantees under the EmpCo Directive (23 July 2026), Fieldfisher — Incoming harmonised EU notices for statutory warranties and commercial guarantees (9 June 2026), European Commission / Your Europe — The EU legal guarantee notice and GARAN label