Kuneva seeks EU-US product-safety alliance

The European Commission is pressing the US administration to strengthen its consumer protection authority to permit an exchange of information across the Atlantic on product safety.

Meglena Kuneva, the European commissioner for consumer protection, is to go to Washington next week (2-7 October) for meetings with the US president’s office of information and regulatory affairs, the Federal Trade Commission, the US department of health and human services and members of Congress’s commerce committees.

The meetings come in the wake of a public-relations fiasco for the US toy-firm Mattel, which this year has had to issue three product recalls over the quality of toys made in China. EU authorities are reviewing whether they could have been alerted earlier to Mattel’s problems.

An internal Commission document prepared ahead of Kuneva’s visit suggests exchanging data with the US on China’s monitoring mechanisms and on product recalls.

A delegation of MEPs will also be visiting Washington next week. They are planning to raise the possibility of greater co-operation on product safety with members of Congress. UK centre-right MEP Jonathan Evans, who is chairing the delegation, said that greater EU-US co-operation on product safety would be raised as part of preparations for the first meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council, a forum made up of senior EU and US politicians charged with improving regulatory co-operation.

Evans said that, given the scale of concerns over toy safety, the sharing of confidential data should not be considered a sensitive issue.

The transatlantic council, which is headed by Günter Verheugen, the European commissioner for enterprise and industry, and Al Hubbard, economic adviser to US President George W. Bush, convenes for the first time on 9 November in Washington. According to the Commission document, EU delegates will discuss opportunities to send a common message to China that safety guarantees are a "firm requirement from all the Western world".

The Commission envisages sharing information with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The transatlantic system could be modelled on Rapex, the EU customs alert system for defective goods, said a Commission official.

"We hope it will allow for confidential information exchange with Europe. In the longer term…we could look at an EU-US formalised Rapex system, but first the CPSC has to have its mandate changed, partly because of confidentiality issues and partly constraints due to the culture [of litigation]," she said.

"We would like to have known about the Mattel recall from the US administration rather than hearing about it from the newspapers. The US is limited in terms of the information it can give to DG Sanco and the rapid alert unit."

At the beginning of September Mattel issued its third large-scale recall of lead-tainted toys made in China. In response, Kuneva ordered a two-month review of safety controls which is including EU-China co-operation, national customs checks and industry certification standards. National surveillance authorities have been asked to report by the end of this week on the success of the Mattel product recall.

In June the Bush administration set up a taskforce, the inter-agency working group on import safety, to review product safety measures. Jerry Regier, the executive secretary of the taskforce, which will deliver its conclusions in November, said that US safety mechanisms had to be strengthened. "This is a problem that is being looked at," he said. "We are certainly not ruling out anything that may have to do with some change in authority or resources."

Kuneva will also discuss with US officials online trading rules, consumer education and collective redress. Planned EU measures on collective redress measures would allow EU citizens to unite across borders to take on corporate wrongdoers.

The European Commission is pressing the US administration to strengthen its consumer protection authority to permit an exchange of information across the Atlantic on product safety.