A Review of Product Safety Regulations in the European Union

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution, structure, and challenges of product safety regulations for non-food consumer products in the European Union, highlighting historical context, legal frameworks, enforcement, and policy issues.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive interpretative review of the EU's complex product safety policy framework, including recent reforms and ongoing challenges.

Findings

Historical development of EU product safety laws

Analysis of enforcement and standardization processes

Discussion of current policy challenges

Abstract

Product safety has been a concern in Europe ever since the early 1960s. Despite the long and relatively stable historical lineage of product safety regulations, new technologies, changes in the world economy, and other major transformations have in recent years brought product safety again to the forefront of policy debates. As reforms are also underway, there is a motivation to review the complex safety policy framework in the European Union (EU). Thus, building on deliberative policy analysis and interpretative literature review, this paper reviews the safety policy for non-food consumer products in the EU. The review covers the historical background and the main laws, administration and enforcement, standardization and harmonization, laws enacted for specific products, notifications delivered by national safety authorities, recalls of dangerous products, and the liability of these. Based on the review and analysis of these themes and the associated literature, some current policy challenges are further discussed.