{"id":424540,"date":"2025-04-16T18:08:54","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T16:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/04\/16\/safety-gate-mercato-unico-rapporto-2024\/"},"modified":"2025-04-16T19:24:54","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T17:24:54","slug":"single-market-consumer-protection-strengthened-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/04\/16\/single-market-consumer-protection-strengthened-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Single market, consumer protection strengthened in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – The European Commission takes a step further in consumer protection<\/strong> within the single market. Today (April 16),\u00a0the annual report of the Safety Gate<\/i><\/strong>, the EU’s rapid alert system for dangerous non-food products,\u00a0has been published<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This system, which came into operation in 2003, allows national single market surveillance authorities to report any non-food product that poses risks to health and safety, as well as the environment<\/strong>, and take prompt action to stop its spread.<\/p>\n

The cross-border sharing of information<\/strong> (regarding the type of product, description of the risk, and measures taken to remedy it) enables the authorities of participating countries\u2014that is, the members of the European Economic Area (EEA)<\/strong>, which includes the Twenty-seven plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway\u2014to take uniform measures.<\/p>\n

Last year, there have been\u00a04,137 alerts collected on the platform<\/strong>: this is the highest number since surveying began, almost double the number of alerts in 2022. The actions recorded in the system<\/strong> by the competent authorities were over 4,200<\/strong>, often resulting in the suspension of sales or even the\u00a0withdrawal of products from the market<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Of the various types of risky products, cosmetics<\/strong> were the most reported, accounting for 36 per cent of the total. In second place, toys<\/strong> (15 per cent), followed by electrical appliances<\/strong> (10 per cent), motor vehicles<\/strong> and chemicals<\/strong> (9 and 6 per cent respectively).<\/p>\n

As for hazardous substances, chemical ingredients<\/strong> are the most reported: cadmium<\/strong>, nickel<\/strong>, lead<\/strong>, allergenic fragrances<\/strong> (including especially BMHCA, a compound banned by EU regulations that can cause skin irritation and go so far as to damage the reproductive system, found in 97 per cent of cosmetics) and synthetic chemicals<\/strong> (such as those used to soften plastic in clothing).<\/p>\n

The 12-star executive is planning a “sweeping”\u00a0<\/strong>investigation, in cooperation with national supervisory authorities, to conduct a series of simultaneous checks on a large number of websites<\/strong>\u00a0to\u00a0detect possible violations of EU regulations in certain sectors or for specific product categories.<\/p>\n

The legal framework of the EEA\u00a0was updated in December last year with the entry into force<\/a> of the General Product Safety Regulation<\/strong>\u00a0for products sold both online and offline. In addition, last April 10, the co-legislators (Europarliament and Council) reached an agreement regarding the Commission’s proposed new rules on safety of toys<\/strong>, which mainly cover harmful chemicals such as PFAS<\/strong>, endocrine disruptors<\/strong> and bisphenols,<\/strong> and the introduction of a digital passport<\/strong> for these items, regardless of whether they are produced in the EU or third countries.<\/p>\n

To assist national surveillance authorities, the webcrawler\u00a0application<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>has also been active since 2022, scanning\u00a0websites in all official EEA\u00a0languages<\/strong> to track down any products among those reported on the Safety Gate<\/i>. In 2024, the webcrawler processed approximately four\u00a0thousand reports from the Safety Gate<\/i><\/strong>, analysing nearly 1.6 million websites and “catching” about 5300 online marketplaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The platform enables national surveillance authorities to monitor dangerous products sold in the European Economic Area, facilitating cross-border cooperation among its 30 member countries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":424535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25705],"tags":[28899,31035,31038,31037,31036,25788],"class_list":["post-424540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-protection-consumer-en","tag-regulation-general-safety-products-en","tag-substances-harmful-en","tag-safety-products-en","tag-safety-gate-en","tag-market-unique-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424540"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":424554,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424540\/revisions\/424554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}