The European Commission has released its annual report on the Safety Gate, the European Rapid Alert System for hazardous non-food products. The report covers alerts issued in 2022, as well as the responses provided by national authorities. Health risks associated with chemical substances were the most frequently reported type of risk, which was also found in a wider range of products. Toys and automobiles top the list of most-notified product categories for the second year in a row.
Main findings of the report
In 2022, authorities from the Safety Gate network’s 30 participating countries (EU Member States, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein) responded to 2,117 alerts with 3,932 follow-up actions. Market surveillance authorities in each Member State followed up on the alerts on a regular basis and exchanged additional information. Additional national measures were included in 84% of follow-up actions. For example, Austrian market surveillance authorities discovered a toy with easily detachable parts that posed a choking hazard to children. Following notification from Austrian authorities, Slovenian authorities identified the toy on their market, and retailers were able to quickly recall the product.
Chemical substance risks, injuries, and choking were the most reported in 2022. Toys were the most frequently reported product category, followed by automobiles, cosmetics, clothing, and electrical appliances. Last year, there were significantly more alerts about the presence of recently banned chemical substances in perfumes and creams in cosmetic products.
However, the sharp increase in chemical risk alerts was not limited to cosmetics, as chemical risks were discovered in a broader range of products. Certain toys, for example, contained an excessive amount of phthalates, which are harmful to the reproductive system.
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Next steps
On 30 June 2021, the Commission presented a proposal for a new General Product Safety Regulation, which will replace the current General Product Safety Directive. The Regulation will modernise the general framework for the safety of non-food consumer products, maintaining its role as a safety net for consumers, and ensuring that the safety challenges posed by new technologies and by the growth of online sales are met.
The General Product Safety Regulation will help ensure that only safe products are sold in the EU, both online and in shops, in the EU or elsewhere. It will significantly improve the enforcement of product safety rules, steamline market surveillance and the recalling of dangerous non-food products.
Background
Since 2003, the Safety Gate has enabled a quick exchange of information among EU/EEA Member States and the European Commission about dangerous non-food products posing a risk to the health and safety of consumers. Appropriate follow-up actions can be taken and products can be removed from the market.
To facilitate the circulation of information to the public, the Commission also manages the Safety Gate public website, which has a modern and user-friendly interface to ease the notification process. Pages are translated into all EU languages, in addition to Icelandic, Norwegian, and recently also Arabic and Ukrainian. Businesses can also use the Business Gateway to inform national authorities quickly and efficiently about security concerns regarding a product that they have put on the market.
The Product Safety Pledge also sets out specific voluntary actions for marketplaces to remove offers of unsafe products from their platforms. 11 online marketplaces have already signed this agreement: bol.com, eMAG, Wish.com, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Rakuten France, Allegro, Cdiscount, Etsy and Joom. The latest progress report of the Product Safety Pledge is available online.
Last year, the Commission also launched a new e-surveillance tool called “web crawler”. The tool aims to further support national authorities in the detection of online offers of dangerous products signalled in Safety Gate. It identifies and automatically lists any of these offers, allowing enforcement authorities to track down the provider and order the effective withdrawal of these offers, helping to harmonise actions and address the challenges of monitoring the online sales of dangerous products. In the past 6 months, the tool has helped process 939 alerts, which resulted in almost 616,000 websites analysed.
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