Euroconsumers joins pilot project aimed at removing unsafe products from online marketplaces

November 24, 2022

Euroconsumers announced it will participate in a pilot project linked to the Product Safety Pledge, a voluntary agreement by e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, Allegro, and more.

This pilot will incorporate Euroconsumers’ testing capabilities to promote online product safety and enhance marketplaces to remove dangerous items from their online platforms.

The new pilot project was announced earlier this month by European Commissioner for Justice and Consumers Didier Reynders at the 2nd Annual Digital Consumer Event. As part of the announcement Els Bruggeman, Head of Policy and Enforcement at Euroconsumers, participated in the panel “Involving consumer organisations with the voluntary cooperation mechanism under the Product Safety Pledge – launch of an innovative pilot project”.

Euroconsumers has a long-lasting experience in running safety tests. Recently its Spanish organisation OCU tested Halloween costumes to verify whether they were safe for children to dress up in, but in recent years there have also been tests on USB chargers, adapters, children’s toys, children’s clothing, smoke alarms, teeth whitening products, and more.

As part of the pilot project, Euroconsumers’ product testing will be used to ?ag unsafe items and to quickly remove them from online platforms. Concretely, Euroconsumers’ organisations will not only alert the manufacturer and the product safety authorities when a product fails the safety test, but also involve online marketplaces to take the product o? swiftly.

“We don’t only want to use our tests to just alert consumers and authorities. We want them to create an impact and make sure these products will not be on sale anymore,” said Bruggeman. “Every unsafe product we can take o?, thanks to this direct engagement with online marketplaces, is one less unsafe product out there.”

“This doesn’t replace our work on legislation and enforcement, and it doesn’t take away the responsibilities for marketplaces to make sure their platform is a safe place to shop,” said Marco Pierani, Director of Public A?airs & Media Relations at Euroconsumers. “But if we stick together, maybe we can even do more. If handled well, this pilot can be a concrete example of how we can co-create something concrete that bene?ts both consumers and e-commerce.”