• Project number: F 2520
• Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
• Status: Completed Project

Description:

Market surveillance authorities are responsible for identifying and, where necessary, withdrawing products from the market that pose risks and therefore do not comply with the legal safety and health requirements of the EU internal market. They are supported in their duties by the European Rapid Alert System Safety Gate (formerly RAPEX), which provides EU Member States and the European Commission with information on actions taken in relation to unsafe products.

Decisions on whether and what action to take are based on a risk assessment process carried out by market surveillance authorities.
The European Commission has set out in principle the procedure to be followed in this process in Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2019/417 (RAPEX Guidelines), which implements Directive 2001/95/EC and sets out the guidelines for risk assessment of consumer products. However, the risk assessment procedure set out in the RAPEX Guidelines is complex because it requires a combination of different factors, such as relevant events and their probability, user groups, the nature and severity of injuries, and product characteristics, sometimes leading to highly inconsistent results.

This project used expert interviews, analysis of documented risk assessments and an online survey to investigate the challenges German market surveillance authorities face in applying the risk assessment guidelines and the practical solutions that have already been developed.

The findings will be marched in a practical guide that provides a structured description of the process, defines relevant terms and suggests methods to improve the quality of risk assessments and make them more efficient. The guide will be made available to practitioners in a usable format.