Europaudvalget 2009-10
KOM (2000) 0139 Bilag 1
Offentligt
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Date July 5, 210
File. no. 231-31-00002
SIKKERHEDSSTYRELSEN
Nørregade 63
DRAFT
6700 Esbjerg
Tlf
33 73 20 00
33 73 20 99
Danish response to consultation on the General Product Safety
Directive legislative initiative
Fax
[email protected]
The General Product Safety Directive provides for a high level of
consumer safety across the European Union. Globalization and speed of
technical developments within the area of consumer products now calls
for a more modern and efficient legislative framework providing more
uniform conditions for economical operators and national authorities as
well as equal competitive conditions for businesses in all Member States
while assuring a consistently high level of consumer protection
throughout the European Union and a well functioning and effective
internal market.
The Danish Government welcomes the Commission initiative in revising
the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD) and supports the alignment
with the New Legislative Framework to the highest possible degree,
assuring common framework for the marketing of consumer products.
The revision of the GPSD aims to resolve identified problems within the
framework of consumer safety legislation. The Danish Government is of
the opinion that services, if they are to be regulated, are considered to be
included in the scope of the Services Directive, and not as an integral part
of the GPSD.
In specific terms, the revision should:
1. Optimize the speed of standardisation procedures while maintaining
the political consensus on the safety requirements within the forum of
Member States as well as a high level of consumer protection. Yet, it is
crucial to keep in mind also that speed needs to be balanced against
transparency, consensus and quality. Standardisation organisations
should be encouraged to develop and improve their working methods,
tools and processes, and the Commission’s mandates to European
www.sikkerhedsstyrelsen.dk
CVR-nr. 27 40 31 23
ØKONOMI- OG
ERHVERVSMINISTERIET
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Standards Organizations (ESOs) should be precise and sufficiently
specific.
2. Ensure that direct reference to documents that are not implemented in
the ESOs are not pursued, in particular not for areas outside the ICT
area. The strength of the European Standardisation System is the
coherence and cohesion of the system and the openness to all
stakeholders according to the WTO principles. Documents developed
by fora and consortia should when necessary be implemented by the
ESOs, and hence not referred to independently as documents with
specific status of their own. However, more emphasis on cooperation
between the ESOs and fora and consortia could be pursued, given that
the views and interests of all stakeholders, including consumers, are
taken into account.
3. Ensure a speedier and more uniform application of EU product safety
“emergency” measures to benefit economic operators, who are active
in more than one member state, by removing legal uncertainty
regarding marketing of products as well as enhancing consumer
protection. We therefore support the proposed Commission initiative
of assessing the impact on making the emergency procedures directly
applicable to economic operators. We also approve of the proposal of
extending the period of validity of these measures, making it
dependant on occurrence of a certain event; such as adoption of an EU
standard or a permanent EU legislative measure with respect to an
identified risk.
4. Improve harmonisation of safety evaluations of consumer products
amongst member States. Diverging safety evaluations pose a problem
for economic operators, as they thereby face inconsistent application of
safety legislation towards their products in different Member States. It
is, however, of outmost importance that remedying measures, which
are chosen, take into account national and cultural differences and
conditions of use of the products in question, while still aiming at
supporting the free movement of goods and services across borders to
the highest degree possible.
5. Considerably improve market surveillance cooperation and
coordination. The change in market structure has raised a need for a
new approach to market surveillance in order to continuously improve
the protection of consumer safety and health. To create an improved
and more uniform control of products, it is important that authorities of
all Member States collaborate and share knowledge about how to plan
to protection of consumers in an optimum manner.
6. Strengthen and ease market control enforcement of consumer products
sold on the internet. As the amount of products sold on the internet is
steadily increasing, it is important to better protect consumer interest in
this area and remove the remaining barriers to cross border trade. We
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support the Commission initiative to create a specific market
surveillance guideline containing a best practice on market
surveillance on products sold online.
7. Assure alignment with the New Legislative Framework (NLF) to the
highest possible degree. Following the adoption of the Free Movement
of Products package, two sets of rules on general product safety exist.
Coexistence of these rules without a substantive and practical
alignment of the GPSD with the NLF, will leave both economic
operators and national market surveillance authorities with differing
product safety obligations. Diverging obligations for economic
operators, diverging competences of market surveillance authorities
and different conditions for notification of measures tackling unsafe
products should be avoided. These diverging requirements lead to
higher administrative burdens in general for businesses and expectedly
higher exposure of consumers to dangerous products. Consequently,
the Danish Government strongly supports the alignment with the New
Legislative Framework to the highest possible degree leading to fewer
legislative differences in Member States while ensuring the
independence of legislation not covered by the NLF. Providing a clear
and uniform set of product safety obligations for economic operators
for all kinds of products and ensuring effective and clear product
traceability will also ensure better enforcement of existing product
safety rules. Consumer products supplied within the context of a
service should be subject to the same product safety legislation as
products supplied directly to the consumer. Application of the
legislation should also not depend on whether the product is operated
by the consumer or by the service provider.
8. Introduce safety requirements that the product do not become
dangerous in their expected lifetime. This requirement needs to take
into account reasonable maintenance to be carried out by the
consumer. Justification for the introduction of this requirement into the
directive is that a wide range of products are not yet covered by
standards, that normally takes aging into account. For the sake of
consumer safety, this requirement is necessary for proper enforcement.
With these recommendations, we believe that a revised GPSD will
provide for equal competitive conditions for businesses in all Member
States and a market surveillance framework strengthening the
collaboration between EU Member States with regard to surveillance and
enforcement across the EU. Ultimately, this will increase the level of
consumer protection as well as assuring consumer confidence.