EU representative for Swiss companies

Why companies in Switzerland need an EU representative

Article 27 GDPR applies based on what you do, not where you are incorporated. If your company offers goods or services to people in the EU, or monitors their behaviour, you need a representative established in the EU, regardless of your home jurisdiction. The full rules are covered in our EU GDPR representative guide.

For Swiss businesses this is rarely optional: serving the EU market almost always crosses the Article 27 threshold. Usantis gives you a real EU representative (a physical EU address, a named representative, and DSAR handling) without you opening an EU entity.

Not sure whether the obligation applies to you? The Article 27 compliance checker walks through the test in about a minute and tells you where you stand.

Specific challenges for Swiss businesses

• Being in Europe, Schengen and the bilateral agreements does not place a company inside the EU or the EEA
• The revised FADP is aligned with the GDPR but is a separate law: complying with one does not discharge the other
• The EU adequacy decision covers data transfers, not the Article 27 duty
• Companies serving the EU, the UK and Switzerland can face three separate representative regimes

What we cover, and what we do not

Usantis provides the EU representative under Article 27 GDPR. Article 14 of the revised FADP points the other way: it requires foreign controllers to appoint a representative in Switzerland, but only where the processing concerns goods, services or behaviour monitoring in Switzerland and is at the same time large-scale, regular and high-risk. Those conditions are cumulative and catch few companies in practice. We do not offer that Swiss representative, and the two appointments do not substitute for each other.

Regulatory context

Relevant frameworks and decisions Swiss companies tend to encounter:

Industries we represent from Switzerland

We act for Swiss companies across sectors, most commonly:

Billing & tax

EU B2B with a valid VAT-ID uses reverse charge. Prices are net and billed in US dollars; Swiss VAT is handled separately under Swiss rules and is the customer’s responsibility.

Support & time zones

Switzerland is on Central European Time, so we share your working day in full.

Frequently asked questions

Other countries we serve