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Effective regulations and coordinated market surveillance in Europe is essential for ensuring that a high level of consumer safety protection is warranted and that a level playing field is established for businesses within the EU. The single market will only work if the level of safety demanded by Member States is the same and is being controlled at similar levels of intensity, competencies and technical requirements.
Much has been achieved in the domain of harmonising safety requirements and in ensuring general safety requirements applicable to all consumer products that are brought into circulation within the EU. However in regard to coordinated surveillance and enforcement in Europe, there is still a need for further development and improvement, as in too many instances enforcement co-ordination in this domain has proven to be:
- subject to shortcomings and delays in communication and in sharing of knowledge;
- inconsistent in risk assessments performed and in decisions made accordingly;
- insufficiently contributing to the creation of a body of knowledge and practical expertise at European level that is basic to decision-making at community level.
Market surveillance authorities within the Member States have developed basic competencies in market surveillance, but in particular the smaller countries have very limited resources for creating core competencies in this domain. Even larger organisations have to cope with the challenges of maintaining a knowledge base and to build a ‘collective memory’ based on practical experiences and enforcement intelligence. No one wants to re-invent the wheel, but it is difficult to find and utilise existing expertise and practices available in other Member States.
Until now, different initiatives have been taken to improve the utilisation of existing experience and harmonisation of methodologies. For example, the European commission has provided guidelines on risk assessment; PROSAFE, a professional network of enforcement professionals in Europe, organises regular meetings for informal exchange of enforcement information and has contributed to documents such as the Guidelines for Corrective Action; and ECOSA, now continued under EuroSafe, organises regular seminars on enforcement intelligence exchange and on risk assessment methodologies.
PROSAFE and EuroSafe have recognised that they have a role to play in strengthening market surveillance competencies in the Member States and in building effective mechanisms for sharing methodologies, procedures and surveillance information. In a joint action Programme, starting in 2006, they will initiate a practical approach for identifying best practice and to build the framework for smooth co-operation and use of existing knowledge.
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