Market surveillance and product safety

Safety is a key principle of EU legislation, in particular for products.

Making sure that economic actors abide by safety standards is a function of market surveillance. This aims to ensure that products circulating in the single market are compliant with the applicable requirements, in particular those for safety.

Strong and effective market surveillance feeds consumers' confidence in the internal market and, from a business point of view, brings legal certainty and increased fairness among economic operators.

The EU legal framework is set out in a range of legal provisions on product safety and market surveillance, which is complex and confusing. In addition, the EU is facing the challenge of improving its current market surveillance and product safety framework to update and upgrade it in response to developments in product market features.

The February 2013 product safety and market surveillance package includes two legislative proposals and a set of 20 actions to be implemented in the interim to make rapid progress on improving market surveillance and product safety.