One step closer to smarter, more effective market surveillance

Now, following over a year of intense negotiations, we are pleased to see that the Council’s Permanent Representatives’ Committee (COREPER) has achieved a workable compromise with the European Parliament and the European Commission - one that upholds the Commission’s initial ambition to bring more intelligence and efficiency into market surveillance at Member State level, and that we believe can be more effective in reducing the number of dangerous or otherwise non-compliant products on the EU Internal Market.

We especially welcome Article 9 on joint activities to promote compliance, which has the potential to significantly improve efficiency by providing an EU-wide legal basis for market surveillance authorities to join forces with organisations representing economic operators - in initiatives such as the Market Surveillance Support Initiative MSSI Electrical, which aims to remove dangerous circuit breakers from the EU market. Together with the new Union Product Compliance Network, this provision will help authorities step up their efforts to ensure public interests covered by EU harmonisation legislation on products are protected, in the interest of both economic operators and end-users.

Moreover, we are pleased to see that the proposal now includes obligations for all economic operators, including those that facilitate the marketing of products imported into the EU: in these cases, an authorised representative or fulfilment service provider should be mandated to hand over compliance information to the market surveillance authorities and cooperate with them as needed to remedy the non-compliance or otherwise mitigate the risk. These obligations are in line with the New Legislative Framework for technology products and will help protect legitimate manufacturers from unfair competition.

We are now calling on the European Parliament to endorse this compromise, in order to create a smarter, more efficient market surveillance regime that will deliver greater protection to consumers while providing a level playing field for legitimate manufacturers.

More information on Orgalim’s views can be found in our latest position paper on the topic.