Transposition Time Updates – New Year Rings in the First EU Member State adoption of the new Product Liability Directive
This is the third of a series of articles in which we update on progress of the transposition of the new Product Liability Directive[1] (“PLD”). Please see our previous articles.[2]
By way of reminder, EU Member States have until 9 December 2026 to transpose the new EU PLD into their national law,[3] and Northern Ireland also has to implement the new PLD by 9 December 2026.[4]
The new year brings only a couple—but major—updates since our last article. In this piece, we briefly discuss updates from Slovak Republic, Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Update on transposition measures – Slovak Republic
In Slovak Republic, the Ministry of Economy published the Draft Act on Liability for Damage Caused by Defective Products (“Draft Act”) on 17 December 2025.
The Slovak Draft Act closely tracks the EU PLD across scope, definitions, damage categories, who can be liable, evidence/presumptions, defences, time limits, and transitional rules. However, the one material omission is the EU PLD’s specific “no‑recourse” rule shielding micro/small enterprise software component manufacturers where the integrator has contractually waived recourse, instead defaulting to joint-and-several liability and ordinary recourse under general civil law without a dedicated carve‑out. The Draft Act also does not reproduce the EU PLD’s transparency obligation to publish final appellate or highest‑instance product liability judgments, although this can be implemented in other legislation or administrative practice outside of this Act. Finally, it uses the term “provider of logistics services” by reference to Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 rather than “fulfilment service provider,” and it frames data damage as “destruction of or damage to data” rather than “destruction or corruption of data”—terminology and wording choices that do not change substance.
The Draft Act is open for comment (by state institutions, companies, NGOs, and even individuals); comments on the draft will later be evaluated by the Ministry of Economy. As at 5 January, there were no published comments. This commentary phase began at date of publishing and will close on 11 January 2026.
Final transposition measures completed – Hungary
In the lead up to the 2026 Winter Olympics, the gold medal award has to go to Hungary for winning the race on transposing the new EU PLD into domestic law.
Following the publication of a draft law implementing the EU PLD in mid-August 2025, which was followed by a very short consultation that closed on 23 August 2025 (with no responses received), the Hungarian Parliament adopted the Ministry of Justice’s draft law on the amendment of laws relating to private law, which will re-write the product liability rules of the Civil Code. The Act was published in the Hungarian Official Journal on 16 December 2025, giving companies nearly a year to prepare.
While the amendments to Hungary’s Civil Code, effective for products placed on the market or put into service on/after 9 December 2026, are largely in line with the EU PLD with regard to definitions, liable economic operators, defect assessment, data damage, evidentiary presumptions, and limitation/expiry periods, there are a few noteworthy national features, namely the following: (1) explicit limits on using the development risk defence for medicinal products used as instructed—which significantly impacts the pharmaceutical industry; and (2) reliance on Hungary’s national SME definition (rather than the definition set out in EU Recommendation 2003/361/EC) for the contractual recourse-waiver safe harbour for micro and small enterprise software makers. These are substantive, but targeted, deviations.
Update on transposition progression – Germany
Since Germany’s Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection published a draft bill for a new, standalone law to replace their Product Liability Act on 11 September 2025, and following a subsequent consultation, the bill is now moving towards parliamentary approval, with the legislative process expected to conclude in the first half of 2026.
The Federal Government published a draft law on 17 December 2025 (substantively the same as the September draft bill). It is currently at the Bundesrat (Federal Council)[5] for comment until 30 January 2026, following which it will be passed on to the Parliament for discussion and decision.
Update on transposition progression – The Netherlands
Since our November 2025 update, the Advisory Division of the Council of State published its advice on 8 December 2025, confirming it had no comments on the proposal to amend the Civil Code[6] to implement the new EU PLD; it recommended that the proposal be submitted to the House of Representatives of the States General.[7]
A combined draft Implementation Act and explanatory memorandum document was published on 18 December 2025.[8] The draft regulation appears to reproduce the same statutory text as the April 2025 draft Implementation Act. The explanatory memorandum was updated from its initial April 2025 iteration to include the incorporation of the consultation responses. There is no additional content that would impact how the draft Act should be interpreted. The memorandum’s reaffirmation of a “pure” one-to-one implementation of the EU PLD, referencing the government programme commitment to ensure no “gold-plating,” demonstrates the Netherlands’ intention to exercise minimal national discretion under the new EU PLD.
This confines the bill to what is strictly necessary to transpose the EU PLD and aligns closely with its text where needed for legal certainty. The ATR[9] concluded that no impact assessment advice was needed as the bill is a pure one-to-one implementation. These choices narrow the scope for national policy variation and pre-empt stakeholder-driven additions that could go beyond the scope of the EU PLD.
Conclusion
There were a few updates that took place during the Festive Period, leading to an interesting start to 2026. Unexpectedly, Hungary took the lead in the Member State race by adopting its law implementing the EU PLD. Germany seems to be moving ahead with its transposition swiftly as well. Given Member States (and Northern Ireland) have only 11 months left to implement the EU PLD into their national law, we expect there to be much activity across the jurisdictions in the first half of 2026. It may be that the jurisdictions who had not yet started their transposition process were wanting to “take watch” while the first few Member States progress through their legislative processes.
CMS will be reporting as progress is made in each of the Member States.
Thank you to CMS CMNO (CMS Slovak Republic and CMS Hungary), CMS HS (Germany), and CMS DSB (Netherlands) for their assistance with transposition updates for their individual jurisdictions.
[1] Directive (EU) 2024/2853 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2024
[2] From 22 May 2025, Transposition Time – Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden: Update on the EU Member States’ adoption of the new Product Liability Directive; from 17 November 2025, Transposition Time – Update on the EU Member States’ adoption of the new Product Liability Directive
[3] Please see our brief summary of the new PLD’s changes in our article published in CMS’ 2025 European Class Action Report, here (pgs. 59 - 64).
[4] See our article from 26 September 2025, Product Liability Reform in the UK: Does Northern Ireland pave the way for an EU style regime?.
[5] Germany’s upper legislative house representing the 16 federal states in federal law-making and acting as a link between the state and federal governments.
[6] Via amendments to the Dutch Civil Code (primarily to Books 6 and 7) and the Transitional Act of the new Civil Code
[7] Implementation Act on the Directive on the Revision of Product Liability. - Council of State
[8] Documents accompanying the Implementation Act on the Directive on the Revision of Product Liability | Overheid.nl | Legislative calendar
[9] “ATR” refers to the Dutch Adviescollege toetsing regeldruk, the Advisory Board on Regulatory Burden. In the December 2025 explanatory memorandum, the drafters note that the consultation draft was submitted to ATR and that ATR indicated formal advice could be omitted because the bill is a “pure one‑to‑one implementation.”
