Goods package: EU law should be better enforced to protect consumers and companies

Yesterday, the European Parliament Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee voted on several legislative proposals to improve the functioning of the EU Single Market

• aimed at better protecting consumers against unsafe products, sold undetected in the EU Single Market,
• aimed at protecting the level playing field and fair competition for companies who sell safe products,
• aimed at urgently improving the proper implementation of market surveillance and mutual recognition throughout the EU by national authorities.

BusinessEurope Director General Markus J. Beyrer commented: "A high number of unsafe products circulates undetected in the Single Market and will further increase with the proliferation of online sales. This is dangerous for consumers and creates an unfair situation for companies that do comply with the EU requirements. It also undermines the trust of citizens in free trade. Better market surveillance is thus urgently needed. The vote improves the draft but fails to address a number of essential problems. Notably, we are concerned with the lack of uniform implementation of market surveillance across Member States and the automatic validity of market surveillance authorities’ decisions on non-compliance in the other Member States. This is problematic because the working methods and levels of professionality of market surveillance authorities significantly diverge between EU Member States."

On mutual recognition, Beyrer said: "Formally, we have mutual recognition for certain types of products, but in practice, too often it simply does not work. Companies are denied access to national markets or asked to modify their products. This is not acceptable and we need effective tools and remedies where mutual recognition is denied."