Source: European Parliament
1. Member States are responsible for organising and carrying out market surveillance as provided for in Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance and product compliance[1]. The Commission helps with coordination and advice, e.g. through the EU Product Compliance Network, and with joint actions. The Commission also designates EU testing facilities[2].
2. Most unsafe products are sold via online marketplaces and directly imported in large volumes of individual parcels. The Commission is pursuing Priority Control Area controls in cooperation with all Member States to assess these products’ compliance with EU regulations at the border and will use all existing tools to enforce them.
The Commission has proposed an ‘EU Customs D ata Hub’, a secure and cyber-resilient set of electronic services and systems to handle logistic and commercial data at EU-level. This will enable customs to proactively identify risks in e-commerce supply chains at EU-wide basis and take control and mitigation measures including the possibility of issuing ‘do not transport’ instructions to prevent non-compliant goods entering the EU. Through the implementation of the Customs Control Equipment Instrument, the Commission is supporting Member States with funding to enhance control capacities at border crossing points and in laboratories. To this end, two grant agreements were recently signed with Cyprus[3]. In the future, for products requiring a Digital Product Passport, customs will retrieve and use the information included therein also for risk analysis.
3. According to Article 41 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Member States shall lay down rules on penalties applicable to non-compliance, that must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
- [1] OJ L 169, 25.6.2019, p. 1-44.
- [2] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market/goods/building-blocks/market-surveillance_en.
- [3] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/projects-results?order=DESC&pageNumber=1&pageSize=50&sortBy=es_SortDate&isExactMatch=true&frameworkProgramme=43251534&countries=20000871.