Market surveillance ensures that products on the EU market do not endanger health and safety of European consumers and workers. It also ensures the protection of other public interests such as the environment, security and fairness in trade.
It includes actions such as product withdrawals, recalls and the application of sanctions to stop the circulation of non-compliant or unsafe products and/or bring them into compliance.
The major objective of the Commission is to ensure that EU market surveillance legislation provides:
- clear and uniform rules applying to non-food products and economic operators
- requirements (infrastructure, organisation, legal powers, etc.) to ensure that market surveillance can cope with enforcing EU legislation
- streamlined market surveillance procedures for controlling products within the EU and at its borders (import controls)
- tools to coordinate activities carried out by national surveillance bodies across the EU (e.g. discussion forums, IT databases, and common market surveillance campaigns).
Market surveillance and the Single Market – why does it matter?
Market surveillance is crucial for the smooth functioning of the Single Market. It helps to protect:
- consumers and workers against unsafe products
- businesses from unfair competition.
Cooperation between national authorities across the Single Market is key to detecting products that do not comply with the applicable legislation and responding appropriately. For this purpose, national authorities are able to exchange information on non-compliant and/or dangerous products (e.g. test results, information on accidents and measures taken) and coordinate their actions more efficiently using a comprehensive cooperation platform (ICSMS – Information and Communication System for Market Surveillance) provided by the European Commission.
Regarding the dangerous products, the Commission operates and coordinates the Safety Gate Rapid Alert System that allows for information on measures taken against non-food dangerous products to be circulated quickly among the national authorities responsible for product safety in the Single Market countries. All countries have to follow up this information and if they find the same product on their own markets and have taken further measures, they have to share this information on Safety Gate as well.
Overall, the indicators on market surveillance suggest that the number of investigations recorded in the ICSMS is increasing in most Member States, thus improving controls in the Single Market and creating a stronger basis for cooperation between Member States.
Investigations per Member State
This chart shows the number of investigations per Member State in 2023 (left axis) and the percentage change since 2019 (right axis).
Note: As the obligatory data collection started only a few years ago, it is likely that there was underreporting in some countries in the early years, partly explaining the strong growth rates comparing 2023 to 2019.
Source: ICSMS (Information and Communication System for Market Surveillance)
Cases of non-compliance per Member State
This chart shows the number of cases of non-compliance found per Member State in 2023 (left axis) and the percentage change since 2019 (right axis).
The significant number of detected cases of non-compliance (as a percentage of the total number of checks) shows that national authorities’ use of the ICSMS data and closer cooperation has allowed them to better focus their controls on cases where the risk of non-compliance is higher.
Source: ICSMS
Sectors with the highest number of investigations and cases of non-compliance
The left axis of the chart shows the sectors with the highest number of inspections and cases of non-compliance in 2023. The right axis shows the growth rates in the number of inspections since 2019.
Source: ICSMS
GPSD – General Product Safety Directive
PPE – Personal Protective Equipment
LVD – Low Voltage Directive
EMC – Electromagnetic Compatibility
RoHS – Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment
More information on market surveillance
More information on market surveillance for products
More information on product safety: Safety Gate: the EU rapid alert system for dangerous non-food products