Malta through the MCCAA participated in the 9th edition of the International Product Safety Week – an event organised by the European Commission every two years. This year’s edition was held between the 14th and the 17th of October in Brussels. With more than 700 participants from countries across the globe, product safety was the key phrase that brought participants together under one roof hence the theme of the International Product Safety Week – ‘Bridges for Global Product Safety’. Throughout this week, different stakeholders had the opportunity to discuss product safety from various aspects ranging from sessions dedicated to new consumer products and the new challenging risks to inclusiveness in product safety regardless of the gender, age and religion among others. Stakeholders included consumer organisations, industry, standard-makers, testing laboratories, researchers, lawyers and national authorities. And for national authorities to ensure that consumer products placed on the market are safe to consumers, there needs to be everyone’s involvement in the supply chain of those products from the manufacturer to the consumer as the EU Member States are getting prepared for the implementation of the new General Product Safety Regulation from December 2024 onwards. Indeed, a complete session was dedicated to this Regulation on Wednesday 16th October where the MCCAA was a panellist speaker as a national authority that will be enforce such Regulation.

One of the key points highlighted by the MCCAA during this session was that relating to recalled products and their effectiveness. This is because while the newly proposed recall template containing all the important details about a recalled product, including the remedies, is a plausible way forward promoting harmonisation, the fact that Member States are still encountering products that lack important elements of traceability, often as simple as a batch or model number, would make it difficult for national authorities to perform an effective recall. Hence, the importance of traceability on the product itself but also all relevant documentation that should accompany the product including the performed risk assessment that all responsible economic operators in the supply chain will be obliged to keep. The concept of starting off in the right way at manufacturing stage so that all important details and information on the product could be passed along the chain from one operator to the next such that in case the product would be deemed non-compliant the necessary action could be taken instantly, aiming at removing unsafe products from the hands of consumers as quickly as possible. At the same time, the importance that economic operations involved in the supply chain communicate effectively among each other such that the Maltese consumers could be provided with an effective remedy of the recalled product in the shortest possible time and with no burdened costs especially if the recall has not been issued by a Maltese economic operator. Moreover, it was emphasized that the importance of cooperation should not only be effective among the economic operators themselves but also the obligation that economic operators, including online marketplaces, must satisfy when it comes to the cooperation and communication with national authorities. All this aims at safeguarding consumers’ interests and enhancing their welfare, which is one of the functions upon which the MCCAA operates.