General Product Safety – a Revolution Through Reform?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2006.00576.x |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Author | Geraint Howells,Duncan Fairgrieve |
LEGISLATION
Gen eral Product S afety ^ a Revolutio n Through Reform?
Duncan Fairgrieve
n
and Geraint Howells
nn
INTRODUCTION
The European Community has a well-developed regime of product safety. In the
1980s the new approach to technical harmonisation gave rise to a fairly compre-
hensive suite of Directives establishing harmonised technical standards for broad
product sectors,
1
which was complemented by a Directive on General Product
Safety in 1992.
2
This sought to ¢ll any gaps with respect to consumer products
by placing a general safety requirement on producers and distributors of all con-
sumer products and required all Member States to haveauthorities equippedwith
powers to address consumer product safety concerns. Important duties were
placed on states to notify safety problems to Brussels so that information could
be exchanged and a co-ordinated European wide policyadopted with, in limited
circumstances, the Commission having the power to impose Europea-wide
solutions.
3
This regime seemed quite well settled, but in 2001 a revised Directive was
issued,
4
whichwent far beyond merelyaddressing someof the technical issues that
had arisen during the Directive’s implementation.
5
We believe that this regime
fundamentally alters the requirements on businesses to respond to product safety
concerns. It can no longer be an in-house matter. Businesses have to inform reg-
ulators of problems. Regulators’ powers have been revamped. Most controver-
sially theycan now require the recall of products that have left the stores and are
in the hands of the ¢nal consumer. It was concern about how this should be
implemented that has caused the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
to be so late in implementing this Directive.
6
The Directive should have been
implemented by 15 January2004, but was not implemented until the summer of
n
British Institute of International and ComparativeLaw.This author would like to acknowledgethe
support of the Product Liability Forumat the British Institute i nthe u ndertaking ofres earchon this
topic: www.biicl.org/plf.All views expressed here, however, are personal.
nn
Lancaster LawSchool and Gough Square Chambers.
1 See Council Resolution on the NewApproach toTechnicalHarmonisationand Standards:OJ4June1985
C 136/1.
2 Council Directive 92/59/EEC: OJ 11 August1992 L22 8/24.
3 This withstood legal challenge i n Case 359/92 GermanyvCommission [1994] ECR I-3681.
4 Directive 2001/95/EC, OJ 15 January 2002 L11/4.
5 See generally C. Hodges,EuropeanRegulationof ConsumerProductSafety (Oxford: OxfordUniversity
Press, 2005).
6 The DTI only published its draftRegulations and consultation paper in December 200 4.
rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2006
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2006) 69(1) MLR 59^69
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