Connected Products and Consumer Claims: What Should Manufacturers Anticipate Ahead of Directive 2024/2853?
Electric vehicle charging points, connected household devices, embedded medical devices, software-driven industrial equipment: almost every product placed on the market today includes, to some degree, a digital component. This technical shift comes with a legal one, and the deadline is now set: by 9 December 2026, all EU Member States must have transposed Directive (EU) 2024/2853 on liability for defective products into national law.
Where does the French transposition stand?
As things stand, no transposition law has yet been published in France. A written question put to the Minister of Justice on 9 December 2025, answered on 12 May 2026, sheds some light on the process: an interministerial working group was set up as early as December 2024, led by the Ministry of Justice’s civil affairs department, and France is taking part in the European Commission’s expert group dedicated to transposition. Consultations with stakeholders from the main sectors concerned were planned for the first quarter of 2026. The Government has indicated that, at this stage, it favours a dedicated piece of legislation rather than folding transposition into a broader EU-adaptation bill, given the directive’s maximum-harmonisation character and the stand-alone nature of this strict liability regime. No bill had, however, been tabled in Parliament as of that answer, leaving a tight timetable ahead of the 9 December 2026 deadline.
A regime designed for today's products
The prior 1985 directive was designed for physical, standalone products whose behaviour did not change after being placed on the market. That model increasingly fails to reflect economic reality. The new directive accordingly broadens the very definition of "product" to cover expressly software, artificial intelligence systems, digital manufacturing files and, more broadly, any connected component capable of affecting the end user's safety.
In practice, a manufacturer that remotely updates the embedded software of a connected device, or that changes its behaviour post-sale through an update, may see its liability engaged under this new regime.
A lower burden of proof for consumers
The most significant change for businesses concerns the evidential threshold. The new text makes it easier for a consumer to establish a defect and the causal link, in particular by imposing enhanced disclosure obligations on manufacturers where they hold technical information (logs, operational data, update histories) that the user would not normally be able to access.
For a manufacturer of connected devices, this means that internal technical documentation (logs, compliance reports, version histories, etc.) becomes a litigation risk in its own right, not merely a product-quality matter.
A wider chain of liability
The directive also widens the pool of entities that can be held liable: beyond the manufacturer of the finished product, suppliers of components (including software) and, in certain cases, importers or EU-based representatives of manufacturers established outside the EU, can now be directly exposed. This is a particular point of concern for foreign companies building out their presence on the French or European market: the question of legal representation and local litigation exposure should be considered at the point of market entry, not addressed retroactively once the first claim arrives.
What this means in practice for claims handling
In practice, there are typically three stages to support businesses facing consumer claims over connected products:
- an initial amicable resolution phase, where the quality of technical documentation and the speed of the response largely determine the outcome;
- where necessary, a judicial or amicable expert assessment procedure, aimed at establishing the origin of the alleged malfunction; and
- should dialogue fail, contentious proceedings, individual or, increasingly, collective, under the group action procedure introduced by the 30 April 2025 reform.
The good news for businesses is that this new framework, if properly anticipated, remains largely manageable. Manufacturers that act now — structuring their technical documentation (its retention over time, its traceability by unit sold, and its prompt accessibility on request), clarifying the contractual allocation of liability with suppliers and subcontractors, and putting in place a responsive, well-documented claims-handling process — significantly reduce their exposure, whether facing an isolated dispute or a group action risk.
Practical tips
These six concrete steps apply to any manufacturer or distributor of consumer products — connected or not, since the directive covers the full range of defective products — to take before the 9 December 2026 deadline:
- Structure your technical documentation on three distinct levels. Retention over time (beyond the product's commercial lifespan), traceability by unit or serial number sold (which software version, which update history, for which specific unit), and prompt accessibility on request. It is the failure to promptly produce this evidence, more than its mere existence, that the new enhanced disclosure regime penalises.
- Map your liability chain. Identify every operator that could be pursued (component and software suppliers, subcontractors, an EU representative if you are a non-EU manufacturer) and clarify the contractual allocation of liability between them.
- Structure your claims-response process. Set internal handling deadlines, a designated point of contact and an escalation protocol. A fast, well-documented amicable response is often what keeps a dispute out of court.
- Prepare for multi-claimant scenarios. If a defect affects a product line, prepare a coordinated handling protocol in advance rather than managing each claim in isolation. This limits inconsistencies across files and strengthens your position if a group action follows.
- Review your warranties and terms and conditions. Check they are consistent with the broadened definition of "product" (software, updates, digital components) to avoid any gap between your contractual commitments and your actual legal exposure.
- Check in with your insurer. Legacy product liability policies do not always explicitly cover software- or AI-related risks — this is worth confirming before, not after, a claim arises.
