NIST GCR 01-825
A Guide to the EU Directive on General Product Safety

Emergency Situations (Article 9 of the Directive)

If the Commission becomes aware, through notification given by the Member States, (See Article 7 or Article 8) of the existence of a serious and immediate risk from a product to the health and safety of consumers in various Member States; and if:

• one or more Member States have restricted the marketing of the product or has withdrawn it from the market;
• Member States differ on the adoption of measures to deal with the risk in question;
• the risk cannot be dealt with in a manner compatible with the urgency of the case under the other procedures laid down by the specific Community legislation under which the product or category of products is governed; and
• the risk can be eliminated effectively only by adopting appropriate measures at Community level;

then the Commission, after consulting the Member States and at the request of at least one of them, may adopt a decision, (See Article 11 of the Directive) requiring Member States to take temporary measures from among those listed in Article 6 of the Directive.

Note: Article 8 of this Directive relates to immediate threats posed by a product. It does not provide for products involving possible long-term risks, which would call for a study of possible technical changes by means of directives or standards (See Annex).

The explicit exclusion of "long-term risks", in the view of the European Commission, represents a shortcoming of the Directive and this exclusion has posed problems in its implementation. In particular, there have been uncertainties on the applicability of Articles 8 and 9 to risks related to long-term effects (carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disruption...), but requiring immediate intervention because of the need to rapidly remove the causes of such long-term effects.

This was brought to bear in the case of toys containing phthalates. The Commission felt compelled to address the applicability of the provisions of Article 9 on Community emergency measures in a case (like the toy case) where the risks for child health are related to release of substances whose potential adverse effects would be apparent only in the long term. Similar considerations would apply to all risks that, in spite of being related to exposure taking place in the short term, would bring serious adverse effects only at a much later stage.

Therefore, the Commission has addressed the need to cover all "serious risks requiring immediate intervention" in the proposed revision of the GPSD (See Text of the Proposed Revised Directive on General Product Safety and Correlation Table).

The Committee (Articles 10 and 11 of the Directive)

See Text of the Directive

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Technology Services, Standards Services Division, Global Standards and Information Group Contact: maureen.breitenberg@nist.gov A Guide to the EU Directive on General Product Safety

Date Created: 01/25/02 Last Modified: 01/25/02