Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-07-Speech-1-178-000"
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"en.20110307.22.1-178-000"2
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"Mr President, good evening to all of my fellow Members who are still here in the Chamber. I will say a few words about the report that we drew up in the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. We chose to call this a report on the revision of the General Product Safety Directive and market surveillance.
The reason why we drew up this own-initiative report is that the Commission is intending to start work on a revision of the General Product Safety Directive, which thus provided a good opportunity for us in the Internal Market Committee to present our recommendations for what this revision should contain. We chose to divide our report into two parts. We present some recommendations for what should be done with regard to market surveillance in general, but, of course, we also provide some very specific recommendations for what a revision of the General Product Safety Directive should contain.
First of all, it is worth mentioning that, when we adopted the General Product Safety Directive a few years ago, it represented a milestone for product safety in the EU. The directive is still sound, but there is a need for improvements. The problems we have today actually relate to the fact that our market surveillance is not effective enough to ensure that the products on the internal market are sufficiently safe. In the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, we therefore recommend that a special effort be made to strengthen market surveillance in the EU. It is the case that, in a time of crisis, there is, unfortunately, a risk that the Member States will allocate fewer rather than more resources to ensuring that market surveillance is carried out. This is highly problematic, and not only for consumers; it is actually just as important for the enterprises that comply with our internal market rules.
In connection with my work on this report, I have spoken to a large number of enterprises on the internal market, many of which said that they have never known there to be any controls, market checks or market surveillance in respect of the products that they are involved with on the internal market. This is obviously problematic because for enterprises, it means – if we have proper market checks – that we can also be certain that there is a reasonable level of competition – in other words, that those who cheat will actually be caught and those who make decent and safe products are able to place them on the internal market. Market surveillance is therefore crucial – not only for the enterprises, but also for consumers, of course. The specific proposals we have for the revision of the General Product Safety Directive are, naturally enough, largely oriented towards consumers.
We think it is extremely important to achieve greater traceability in connection with the products that are on the internal market. The traceability of products is vital if we are to be able to withdraw products more quickly. We also believe that there is a general need for the Member States to act more swiftly when we discover dangerous or problematic products on the internal market. Furthermore, we believe that there is a need, in particular, to look at products coming from third countries, in other words, countries outside the EU. There is an increasing number of products coming onto the internal market. We need to ensure that they actually comply with our internal market rules.
In order to be able to ensure, in future, that we produce more targeted legislation, we also propose in the report that the mandatory production of accident statistics be introduced at EU level so that we can find out in a more targeted way where there is a need for legislation based on what kind of accidents occur with products on the internal market. This will enable us to draw up more precise and more targeted legislation in the areas where there is actually a need for it, so as to ensure that products are safe without inconveniencing those enterprises that produce perfectly sound products.
We also believe that we need to take a look at those products that are sold online. We can see that there are problems in this area. In any case, many people complain that products sold online do not comply with the same safety regulations as those bought on the ordinary market. Of course, we also believe that there is a general need for us to have a good dialogue with the customs authorities with a view, among other things, to ensuring that there are better and safer products on the internal market.
Finally, I would just like to say that I had, of course, also hoped that we might have been able to take a closer look at how we could protect our children on the internal market. However, this did not receive support in the Internal Market Committee. This means that we do not intend to draw up any separate child protection measures; we simply intend to increase our product safety in general.
I would like to finish by saying to the Commission that we most definitely believe that there is a need for a revision of the General Product Safety Directive. We believe that there is a need to strengthen market surveillance. We believe that there is a need for coherent market surveillance on the internal market so that requirements are not split between different pieces of legislation. We believe that there is a need for a single coherent umbrella to ensure that more market surveillance is carried out. It is quite simply a question of citizens being able to have confidence in the products that are on the internal market, and enterprises must have a fair and level playing field in terms of competition on the internal market. I would like to finish with those words and to call on the Commission to begin work on the revision of the General Product Safety Directive very soon. I would also call on the Member States to allocate sufficient resources to ensuring that proper market surveillance is carried out."@en1
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