Brussels – The European Commission has announced significant advancements in consumer protection within the single market framework.

On April 16, the annual report of the Safety Gate, the EU's rapid alert system for dangerous non-food products, was published, highlighting a growing emphasis on the safety and regulation of consumer goods across member states.

Launched in 2003, the Safety Gate system enables national single market surveillance authorities to promptly report and manage non-food products posing risks to health, safety, and the environment.

This collaborative framework allows for cross-border sharing of information regarding identified risks and the measures taken to mitigate them, facilitating uniform action among participating countries.

In 2023, the Safety Gate platform recorded a total of 4,137 alerts, marking the highest annual number since the system's inception, and almost double the alerts reported in 2022. Actions taken by competent authorities exceeded 4,200, leading to widespread product suspensions and withdrawals from the market.

Cosmetics emerged as the most frequently reported risky product, constituting 36% of total alerts, followed by toys at 15%, electrical appliances at 10%, and motor vehicles and chemicals at 9% and 6% respectively.

Notably, hazardous chemical ingredients topped the list of reported risks, with particular concern over the substances cadmium, nickel, lead, allergenic fragrances, including BMHCA, and various synthetic chemicals used in plastics.

In response to the increasing number of alerts, the European Commission is set to launch a comprehensive investigation in collaboration with national supervisory authorities.

This initiative will include simultaneous checks across numerous websites to identify potential violations of EU product safety regulations.

The legal framework governing the European Economic Area (EEA) was revised in December 2022 with the enactment of the General Product Safety Regulation, which applies to products sold both online and offline.

Further, on April 10, an agreement was reached by the Europarliament and the Council regarding new rules for toy safety.

These regulations focus on harmful chemicals, including PFAS, endocrine disruptors, and bisphenols, and introduce a digital passport for toys, irrespective of their place of production.

To enhance the capabilities of national surveillance authorities, a webcrawler application has been active since 2022, scanning websites in all official EEA languages to locate products reported on the Safety Gate.

In 2024, this application analyzed approximately 1.6 million websites and processed around 4,000 reports from the Safety Gate, successfully identifying about 5,300 online marketplaces potentially offering non-compliant products.