| Author (Corporate) | European Commission |
|---|---|
| Series Title | COM |
| Series Details | (2013) 75 final (13.2.13) |
| Publication Date | 13/02/2013 |
| Content Type | Policy-making |
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The European Union needs a Single Market that is operating at maximum efficiency to help get its economy back on track. The free movement of goods is the most developed and best established of the four fundamental freedoms laid down in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that make up the internal market. But it would be complacent to believe that the job is done. True, harmonisation rules have now been put in place for most products and the free movement provisions of the TFEU, supplemented by the mutual recognition principle, are sufficient for the rest. But even a good legislative framework is only as effective as those using it allow it to be. Alongside responsible economic operators, prepared to adapt their methods and incur the costs necessary to comply with the law, there will always be those traders who cut corners or deliberately flout the rules to ‘make a fast buck’ or gain a competitive edge. These sharp practices not only skew the single market against the type of trader we wish to encourage, damaging its effectiveness and causing detriment to consumers and business, they also threaten the public interests that our legislation is designed to protect. In addition to financial burden, the European citizen is exposed to potentially dangerous products. The environment is put at risk. Public security may even be undermined. Market surveillance is the answer. If high quality legislation, based on a sound evaluation of market needs is one side of the coin, market surveillance is the other. It should enable unsafe or otherwise harmful products to be identified and kept or taken off the market and unscrupulous or even criminal operators punished. It should also act as a powerful deterrent. Market surveillance has not kept pace with developments in the Union regulatory framework. In a single market in which products circulate freely throughout 27 (and in some sectors up to 32) national territories, market surveillance needs to be highly coordinated and capable of reacting rapidly over a huge area. Advances have been made over the last decade, in particular with the implementation of Directive 2001/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on general product safety (the "General Product Safety Directive" or simply GPSD) which had to be transposed by 2004 and with the coming into application in 2010 of Regulation (EC) 765/2008 setting out the requirements for accreditation and market surveillance. However, overlap of market surveillance rules and obligations of economic operators laid down in various pieces of Union legislation (the GPSD, the Regulation (EC) 765/2008 and sector-specific Union harmonisation legislation) has led to confusion on the part of both economic operators and national authorities and has seriously hampered the effectiveness of market surveillance activity in the Union. This proposal aims at clarifying the regulatory framework for market surveillance in the field of non-food products. It merges the rules on market surveillance of the GPSD, Regulation (EC) 765/2008 and many sector-specific pieces of Union harmonisation legislation into a single legal instrument that applies horizontally across all sectors. The proposal is part of the "Product Safety and Market Surveillance Package" which also includes a proposal for a regulation on consumer product safety (replacing the GPSD) and a multi-annual action plan for market surveillance covering the period 2013-2015. After the Single Market Act (2011) had identified the revision of the GPSD and the drawing up of a multi-annual action plan for market surveillance as initiatives that will contribute to boosting growth and creating jobs, the Commission added this proposal for a single market surveillance regulation to the other two initiatives in response to calls from the European Parliament and from stakeholders in industry and public administrations. The Single Market Act II, adopted in 2012, confirms the "Product Safety and Market Surveillance Package" as a key action "to improve the safety of products circulating in the EU through better coherence and enforcement of product safety and market surveillance rules". |
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| Source Link | Link to Main Source http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2013:075:FIN |
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| Subject Categories | Business and Industry, Internal Markets |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
