Motor vehicles, toys and electrical appliances are the three categories of non-food products with the most alerts on Safety Gate, the EU rapid alert system to protect consumers, according to the European Commission’s latest report for 2021.
In this annual report, for the first time, cars are at the top of the list of notified products, followed by toys. Also, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, protective equipment like face masks still makes up a substantial part of the products notified.
The new report, presented by Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders covers alerts notified during 2021 and the actions taken by national authorities in response.
Alerts are available to the public on the Safety Gate (https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate) in all EU official languages.
The Commission also launched a new e-surveillance tool called web crawler that will help national authorities detect the online offers of unsafe products signaled in Safety Gate.
The tool will support national authorities in the detection of online offers of dangerous products signalled in Safety Gate. This tool will identify and automatically list any of these offers, allowing enforcement authorities to track down the provider and order the effective withdrawal of these offers.
Reynders said that Safety gate should be “adapted to fit into the new consumer environment”, in order to remain an efficient tool for the Single Market, protecting consumers in all circumstances.
“It has also helped ensuring that equipment used in the fight against the pandemic is of the highest standards,” he added.
In 2021, authorities of the participating countries of the Safety Network (the 27 member states plus Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway) exchanged 2,142 alerts through the system. For the first time, the highest number of alerts was notified in the category “motor vehicles” category, followed by “toys” and “electrical appliances and equipment”.
As regards motor vehicles, actions taken mainly concerned recalls following the detection of technical problems while for toys, they focused on the presence of dangerous chemicals, as well as button batteries. Furthermore, the most common problems reported for electrical appliances and equipment related to the exposure of live parts and overheating issues.
As the pandemic continues, surveillance actions featured a range of COVID-19 related products. There were many alerts related to protective equipment, with protective masks particularly under the spotlight.
The five most common risks reported were personal injuries, chemicals, fire, choking and electric shocks. In total, 4,965 follow-up notices circulated in Safety Gate, showing that Member States closely monitor the alerts and often follow-up with additional measures taken in their own countries.
Since 2003, the Safety Gate enables quick exchange of information between EU/EEA member states, the UK (Northern Ireland) and the European Commission about dangerous non-food products posing a risk to health and safety of consumers.
To date, eleven online marketplaces have agreed to cooperate with Member States to remove dangerous products from their websites: bol.com, eMAG, Wish.com, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Rakuten France, Allegro, Cdiscount, Etsy and Joom.
Source: Cyprus News Agency