EU Member States (the Council of the EU) are following the approach of the European Parliament in not making online marketplaces liable for dangerous products sold online by third-party vendors using their platforms. This is BEUC’s conclusion of Member States’ general approach on the reform of EU product safety law, the General Product Safety Regulation, of which the text was published this Friday.

Time and time again, BEUC finds online marketplaces to be a source of dangerous products. What strikes consumer organisations is that this issue is not being addressed, despite the Council declaring that “what is illegal offline should be illegal online” in the context of a parallel reform of e-commerce legislation. This principle is not heeded now.

BEUC Director General Monique Goyens said:
“Decision-makers have chosen to ignore the shortcomings of a fundamentally dysfunctional market, where certain third-party traders use online marketplaces to sell products that turn out to be unsafe or otherwise non-compliant. Online marketplaces do not consider it their responsibility to keep people safe in this context, while making a lot of revenue.

“Both EU Member States and the European Parliament are pushing the issue of dangerous products sold online like a hot potato between reforms of e-commerce, product safety, and product liability laws without any serious effort to tackle it. 

“This lack of ambition puts pressure on market surveillance authorities, and therefore national budgets, who will have to do more checks to stem the flood of non-compliance and protect consumers.”

Next steps
EU Member States will meet the European Parliament and Commission to reach a conclusion on this file. The file will afterwards go to a Parliament plenary session and to Council for final approval.

More information

• Here a flavour of why the reform of product safety law matters to consumers
• The Parliament’s position on the reform of this law

ENDS