From necklaces that can trigger allergies, to bunk beds in which children can get their head stuck: The EU’s rapid alert warning system for non-food products, called ‘Safety Gate’, compiles notifications on all kinds of dangerous products so that Member States are aware about the most urgent safety threats.
This blog is part of our 60th anniversary series, tying the six decades of BEUC’s existence to current day concerns. This one focuses on the 1970s. For more, delve into our anniversary booklet.
Europe calling: how EU-wide safety alerts started
In July 1978, the media reported that four elderly people in the UK had contracted botulism from a shared can of salmon. UK consumer association Which? contacted BEUC members in other countries to check whether their health authorities had been informed. They had not.
BEUC then immediately set up its own mutual alert system among members and campaigned for setting up a Europe-wide alert system, as we explain in our 60-year anniversary retrospective. Imagine how time-consuming this must have been: fax machines would do the job as of the 1980s, making communication probably quite burdensome in the early years.
Rapid alerts today: more information exchange – but with limits
Today, the EU has two notification systems for market surveillance and enforcement: one for non-food goods (Safety Gate), one for food and feed (RASFF). In this blog I will delve into Safety Gate, which is an online database that speeds up the exchange of information compared to the good old days of the fax machine. This database has an intranet where Member States can exchange pictures, laboratory reports and other sensitive information behind closed doors. A publicly accessible part allows consumers to research information about dangerous products, read weekly reports, see annual statistics and more.
What is missing though is that no one knows how many single non-food products are linked to the over 2,000 notifications per year. BEUC suspects Safety Gate only portrays the tip of the iceberg as many dangerous products may fly under the radar of the authorities. There is also opaqueness around the follow-up to the notifications, such as the level of fines that Member States apply or whether economic operators successfully implement corrective measures.
Fit for the future? – from compiling to crawling
A current challenge for enforcement authorities is the surge of single small parcels sent directly to consumers from outside the EU, making controls even more burdensome. Hopefully the recently launched EU web crawler will make things easier. This artificial intelligence tool can search online marketplaces automatically for products that have already been notified in Safety Gate, and flag those to the Member States’ authorities.
To ensure Member States can efficiently join forces, react, and take dangerous products off the market, the Safety Gate will get a face lift. But no ground-breaking novelties are foreseen in the ongoing revision of the ‘General Product Safety Regulation’ – the EU’s key legislation in this regard.
This all being said, Safety Gate is only a support tool and can only complement rules and enforcement. And precisely here something is missing.
Safety Gate must be matched by effective legislation that’s enforced
What is really concerning is the missing political will to tackle the root cause of dangerous products being sold on online marketplaces which consumer groups flag year in year out. Marketplaces urgently need to be held liable for the safety of products from third-party sellers if no-one else in the EU can be held responsible.
Online marketplaces are making huge revenues while selling illegal and dangerous goods, and seem uncapable of controlling even the most obvious stuff, such as weapons, or to ensure the safety of babies. There is a scandalous lack of control on what goes up for sale. Even if consumers notify dangerous products, online marketplaces do not bother to remove them.
There are even more examples. British consumer group Which? set up a fake web shop within a few minutes but when they wanted to close it down, it took months to get a reaction from the online marketplace where the shop was set up. Also, Dutch journalists demonstrated that toxic toys can be sold online even if the seller fails to self-declare legal compliance during the registration process. Little seems to be done about fake reviews that mislead consumers about product safety and quality, or the same products popping up again and again, such as faulty smoke alarms and CO2 detectors.
And the EU should also re-assess wider policy initiatives
Beyond marketplace liability, the EU should also think again about the role of other product safety policies. For instance, it is unrealistic to think that voluntary cooperation between regulators and online marketplaces (called the ‘Safety Pledge’) will bring any solution.
Instead, the EU should pursue other actions. For instance, a modern traceability system can be implemented ad-hoc for risky products along the supply chain. This can make Safety Gate more impactful because products can be more easily identified and removed.
Penalties must also be stepped up against businesses which violate safety legislation. These penalties, such as fines, need to be transparent, and not be protected by authorities as a business secret – which is the case now.
What is more is that the EU has not managed to create a pan-European accident and injury database, another important complement to Safety Gate. While consumer groups have advocated for such a system, to prevent more injuries from happening, it is currently foreseen that only a few new reporting obligations will be added to Safety Gate.
BEUC has worked hard towards product safety during its existence: we are 60 years young and 60 years strong. We will keep giving input to the EU authorities and call on them to complement Safety Gate with truly impactful product safety legislation and policies. In the era of instant communication, let’s hope it goes faster than fax machines.