Introduction

Product safety

About

Products that circulate on the European market must be safe to use. BEUC continuously urges the EU to keep safety legislation up to date. In our advocacy, we focus on both horizontal (the General Product Safety Regulation) and sector-specific legislation such as on toys and cosmetics.

Innovation often exposes blind spots in EU safety legislation. For example, there is currently a trend where unsafe products enter people’s homes through online shops. These have included products as diverse as malfunctioning smoke alarms, slime toys with chemicals, and USB chargers that could give an electric shock. As this is a global market surveillance problem, we recommend authorities block unsafe products at the EU’s external borders and work better together across the EU and internationally.

Even the strongest laws will be meaningless unless authorities enforce them in practice. A major role lies with EU countries which should dedicate enough resources, time and energy to enforcement and market surveillance.