Over the past year, we have published extensively on the EU’s new Product Liability Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/2853) (“PLD” or the “Directive”), the most sweeping reform of European product liability law in four decades. Our prior alerts, blog posts, and conference presentations have covered the Directive’s expanded product definition (including software and AI), its claimant-friendly burden-of-proof presumptions, broadened disclosure obligations, and new categories of recoverable damage.
This alert is an update on the status of implementation across the 27 EU Member States. As a reminder, all 27 EU Member States must transpose the PLD into national law by December 9, 2026. The Directive applies to products placed on the market or put into service after December 8, 2026 (a recent corrigendum corrected the original text, which stated that the new PLD applies to products placed on the market or put into service after December 9, 2026). With fewer than four months until the deadline, we are tracking where each Member State stands, and where meaningful national divergences are emerging that will shape companies’ litigation risk and compliance posture on day one.
Where things stand
Member State transposition efforts fall into four categories:
Completed transposition: Hungary, Croatia, and Lithuania have completed transposition. Hungary was first, with its parliament adopting the implementing law on December 16, 2025, giving companies nearly a year to prepare. The law rewrites the product liability rules of the Civil Code. Croatia followed on July 7, 2026, by amending its Civil Obligations Act and notifying the Commission. Lithuania’s Seimas adopted its bill on June 25, 2026, as Act XV-1080. The Act expressly implements Directive 2024/2853 and enters into force on December 9, 2026.
Well underway (draft legislation prepared): Twelve Member States have prepared draft legislation: Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. Germany, Slovakia, and the Netherlands are furthest along – each is in parliamentary process and tracking toward adoption in the fall. Belgium, Italy, and Slovenia entered the pipeline more recently but are moving. The remainder have drafts in various stages of consultation and review.
Early stages (taken initial steps): Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Republic of Ireland, Latvia, and Romania have taken initial steps toward transposition but have not yet published draft legislation. Austria is preparing a draft and expects to submit it to parliament this fall. Bulgaria is preparing draft legislation, with public consultation scheduled for August 2026 and submission to the Council of Ministers expected in September. Estonia expects a government proposal to reach parliament in September 2026. France has confirmed an interministerial working group, Commission expert-group participation, and stakeholder consultations.
No known public movement: Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, and Spain have made no known public progress toward transposition. View a map of EU Member State transposition status under the Product Liability Directive.
Key divergences to watch
The PLD is a maximum-harmonization directive, meaning that Member States generally may not adopt more or less stringent rules than those set forth in the Directive. But the PLD expressly leaves room for national discretion in certain areas. In others, differences emerging in national implementing legislation raise questions about whether Member States have gone beyond the discretion the Directive allows.
Development risk defense. This defense protects manufacturers from liability if they can prove that the scientific and technical knowledge at the time of the product’s release was not advanced enough to discover a hidden or latent defect. Article 18 expressly permits Member States to depart from the PLD’s development risk defense. Member States may maintain existing measures imposing liability where the state of scientific and technical knowledge did not permit a defect to be discovered and, subject to specified conditions and a notification procedure, may introduce or amend such measures for specific categories of products. Finland will continue its longstanding exclusion of the development risk defense, while Hungary limits the defense for medicinal products used as instructed. Germany retains the defense, subject to its existing carve-out for genetic engineering products.
Non-material damages. The PLD expressly leaves aspects of damages to national law. Recital 23 provides that Member States determine the rules for calculating compensation and that non-material losses resulting from covered damage, such as pain and suffering, are compensable to the extent permitted under national law. As a result, the availability and calculation of non-material damages may continue to vary across Member States even under the PLD’s maximum-harmonization framework.
Excessive difficulties threshold. Article 10(4)(a) of the PLD allows presumptions of defectiveness and causation where a claimant faces “excessive difficulties” in proving defect and/or causation due to technical or scientific complexity. Finland and Sweden use less demanding language in their implementing proposals, potentially lowering the threshold for claimants to trigger the presumptions. Unlike the development risk defense and non-material damages, however, the PLD does not expressly authorize Member States to vary this threshold. Whether these divergences represent permissible implementation choices or conflict with the Directive’s maximum-harmonization requirement may require judicial resolution.
Disclosure. Member States are taking different approaches to implementing the PLD’s disclosure requirement. Some are adopting new, PLD-specific disclosure provisions, while others are relying in whole or in part on existing procedural rules. Regardless of the approach, Article 9 requires courts to have authority, where appropriate and proportionate, to order that disclosed evidence be presented in an easily accessible and understandable manner – a significant change in those jurisdictions with traditionally limited discovery. For example, Belgium’s government has expressly acknowledged that the PLD disclosure requirement goes beyond existing document production under Article 877 of the Judicial Code. The Directive also contemplates that compliance may require compiling or classifying evidence into a comprehensible presentation rather than simply producing documents as they exist.
Distributor liability in Denmark. Denmark proposes to keep its existing fault-based distributor liability rules within the PLD framework. Once the injured party proves defect, damage, and causal link, the burden shifts to the distributor to prove it did not make the product dangerous. Denmark relies on Article 2(4)(b), which preserves national non-contractual liability based on grounds other than defectiveness under the PLD, to maintain this regime. Whether those rules fall entirely outside the PLD’s maximum-harmonization requirement may become an important issue as distributors defend claims under the new PLD.
What your business should do right now
With less than four months until the new PLD framework applies, companies doing business across the EU should move from PLD awareness to implementation. Five priorities should be on your list now:
- Map PLD exposure across your EU footprint
Do not assume implementation will be identical across all 27 Member States. Identify where your products are placed on the market, which entities in your supply chain may qualify as economic operators, and where national implementation choices could materially alter exposure. Pay particular attention to national implementation choices that may materially affect liability or litigation exposure. - Prepare now for expanded disclosure
Identify where product-design, testing, safety, regulatory, cybersecurity, software-update, and post-market information resides and how quickly it can be collected and explained. Review document-retention and information-governance practices, and implement protocols to protect privileged legal analysis and commercially sensitive information. The PLD’s disclosure requirement may significantly expand access to evidence in jurisdictions with traditionally limited discovery, including in-house counsel legal communications, which are not privileged in many EU Member States. - Review supplier, software, and distribution agreements
Review contractual provisions addressing indemnification, contribution, and recourse; software updates and cybersecurity; information sharing; and choice of law. Pay particular attention to whether contracts clearly allocate responsibility for safety-related software and cybersecurity updates and provide access to information that may be needed to defend a product liability claim under the new Directive. - Audit lifecycle, cybersecurity, and update practices
Define responsibility for safety-related software and cybersecurity updates throughout the period in which products remain within the manufacturer’s control. Document support periods, vulnerability-response processes, and end-of-support decisions. Coordinate PLD readiness with applicable product safety and cybersecurity requirements, because compliance with mandatory safety requirements can directly affect the defectiveness analysis under the PLD. - Reassess insurance against the new exposure profile
Review product liability, cyber, and technology E&O coverage against the PLD’s expanded scope, including software, data loss or corruption, medically recognized psychological injury, and the broader range of economic operators that may face liability. Pay particular attention to coverage allocation, exclusions, territorial provisions, and contractual indemnity requirements.
The bottom line
With the December 9 deadline approaching, Member State implementation is beginning to take shape. Three Member States have completed transposition, draft legislation is moving through twelve more, and additional proposals are expected this fall. While most implementing measures track the PLD closely, the differences emerging in areas such as defenses, evidentiary presumptions, disclosure, distributor liability, and damages are meaningful.
Companies should not wait for all 27 Member States to finish the process before preparing. There is now enough visibility into both the PLD and national implementation to identify where the new regime will affect existing products, contracts, litigation practices, and risk allocation. The next several months should be used to address those issues so that December 9 is an implementation date, not the beginning of the preparation process.
Resources
For the full body of Reed Smith’s EU PLD analysis – including sector-specific guidance on automotive, aviation, software, cybersecurity, insurance, and more – visit our EU Product Liability Directive Resource Center.
Track Member State implementation progress in real time at the EU Product Liability Directive Tracker. The Tracker features an interactive map covering Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy (with more jurisdictions being added). It provides draft bill status, comment periods, procedural status, and a compare tool for side-by-side jurisdiction comparison.
For more information or to discuss how these developments affect your business, please contact your Reed Smith relationship partner or any member of our Product Liability team.
Client Alert 2026-178