ANEC and BEUC Give Advice on GPSC Updates

EU consumer groups ANEC and BEUC in January listed seven issues they would like addressed in any updates to the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD). These were built around what the groups termed the EU's "main product safety challenges" – globalization, increased online shopping, new technologies, and "lack of robust rules on chemicals."

The seven desires (bit.ly/36vDOqH) – broadly overlapping eight worries the groups raised last fall (PSL, 9/14/20) – involve keeping the precautionary principle, ensuring the GPSD or successor still can address sector-specific loopholes, harmonizing market surveillance, creating liabilities for online marketplaces (see below), expanding the meaning of safety to include security against unauthorized access, strengthening Member State regulators' roles in setting safety requirements, and detailing chemical safety criteria.

As for online marketplaces, ANEC and BEUC note that they are not specifically mentioned given their relative newness. They write that this needs to be fixed not only in the GPSD but also in the e-commerce and liability directives.