Mechanical vehicles have overtaken toys and electrical appliances and equipment on the list of Europe’s most dangerous products for the first time, according to European Commission’s (EC) report Safety Gate for 2021.
Every year EC publishes Safety Gate report. In it EC lists the warnings, measures taken by institutions of different countries, as well as responses to them. In 2021 this system was used by member states participating in the safety network to exchange 2 142 warnings, as BNN was informed by European Commission’s representation office in Latvia.
Since 2003 Safety Gate initiative has allowed EU and European Economic Zone (EEZ) member states and the United Kingdom to quickly exchange information about non-food products that are potentially dangerous for consumers’ health and safety. The system also allows member states to perform necessary measures and pull products from the market.
As for mechanical vehicles, measures were mainly aimed at pulling them from the market following reports of mechanical malfunctions. As for toys, experts mainly paid attention to the presence of dangerous chemicals and button cells.
Considering consumers’ switch to online shopping platforms, new instruments have been developed to better protect people who frequently shop online and to successfully pull faulty and dangerous goods from the market. According to these goals, EC has also started implementing a new e-monitoring tool also known as «web crawler», which is meant to help state institutions uncover dangerous products offered online.
This tool identifies and automatically creates lists of such offers to help law enforcement institutions identify service providers and demand that they pull their offers from the market.
«The Safety Gate has once again proved to be a vital tool to keep consumers safe from dangerous products. I am also proud of the continuous upgrade and reinforcement of the system. It is very important that the Safety Gate is adapted to fit into the new consumer environment,» said EC Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.
With the pandemic still continuing, monitoring measures extend to goods potentially related to Covid-19. Many warnings has been received about individual safety gear, especially for masks.
Most reports deal with five main risks: risk of personal injury, chemicals, fire, choking and risk of electric shock.
Generally Safety Gate has been used to distribute 4 965 reports on future measures, which indicates that member states closely monitor warnings and often include them in their respective authorities’ measures.
On an international level, considering close trade ties between EU and US, the European Commission has commenced an informal dialogue about protection of consumers rights with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to further strengthen cooperation. During this dialogue, officials plan to address the topic of the rise of e-commerce, wide introduction of new technologies, globalisation of production and retail trade, as well as special needs of unprotected consumer groups.
Another measure to protect consumers is the Product safety pledge, which details a list of specific voluntary measures to be implemented by stores to pull from their shelves potentially dangerous products. So far eleven online stores have signed this pledge to cooperate with member states in efforts to pull dangerous products from their online platforms: bol.com, eMAG, Wish.com, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Rakuten France, Allegro, Cdiscount, Etsy and Joom.