A Review of Product Safety Regulations in the European Union

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 legislations, administration and enforcement of the policy, standardization and harmonization, legislations enacted for specific products, notifications delivered by national safety authorities to the EU's alert system, recalls of dangerous consumer products, and the liability of these. Based on the review and analysis of these themes and the associated literature, the current policy challenges are further discussed.