Consumer accident monitoring system survives threat of termination

Date: 04/12/1997

By Leyla Linton

THE EU's only system for monitoring the Union's annual 20 million leisure and home accidents has won a 12-month reprieve.

The European Home and Leisure Accidents Surveillance System (EHLASS) had been facing the axe at the end of this year, following a recent report which concluded that it was not working well.

The European Commission's Directorate-General for consumer policy (DGXXIV) said that it no longer wished to shoulder the financial burden of spending 13% of its budget on the scheme. But Commission officials have come up with a solution which will keep it going for another year.

EHLASS, launched in 1981, is the only way the EU has of keeping track of consumer accidents which kill 83,000 Union citizens a year. Commission subsidies cover 2.5 million ecu of the 3.2-million-ecu cost of the system.

An external audit ordered by the Commission found that the way EHLASS was organised prevented maximum use being made of the accident data gathered at national level. However, the same report said the potential of EHLASS was "immense" and that the system should be improved, rather than ended altogether.

Consumer groups agree. Bruce Farquhar, secretary-general of ANEC, the European association for the coordination of consumer representation in standardisation, said the concept was very good, but that the data it provided was not detailed enough, compared to the US.

ANEC is calling on the Commission to come up with an action plan to make the system work better in the long term.

According to the European Consumer Safety Association and Commission figures, more people are killed in the home or at play than on the roads and at the workplace, where annual accident-related deaths are 45,000 and 8,000 respectively.

Farquhar said that despite this, consumer safety in this area was being overlooked at European level, with more emphasis being given to food safety.

Feature on the European Home and Leisure Accidents Surveillance System (EHLASS).