"What the Funke!"........
David Lovell
Regulatory Expert | Helping businesses to navigate their way through a Complex Regulatory Landscape
Case C-62621 Funke….
Before you even go there, I haven’t been spending my weekend streaming Paramount+ episodes of CSI Miami back to back watching criminologists use scientific methods to solve grisly murders….but I have stumbled across a most extraordinary press release issued by the Court of Justice of the EU relating to an Advocate General’s opinion.
All very timely this one as we see how RAPEX has just literally been upgraded in time for Christmas to a grand spanking new?Product Safety Risk Assessment Methodology aka PRISM.
OPSS tells us?on.gov.uk?that PRISM is for use by market surveillance authorities and enforcing authorities in GB with responsibility for consumer product safety. It provides authorities in essence with an updated risk assessment methodology that addresses some of the limitations of the EU Safety Gate approach (RAPEX) and allows for a more comprehensive, robust and informed assessment and consideration of risk.?
Well, right as now I’m thinking – I really do hope so.
Case C-62621 relates to economic operators having the right to?request the completion of a RAPEX notification on the basis of the Treaty provisions concerning the free movement of goods and?we have a real-life situation here - cold case it is not…
Firecrackers were imported into the EU from China by a Polish company called Funke.?The product ended up in a number of Member States including Austria where the authorities found them to be unsafe and as a result issued 3 RAPEX notifications. Once verified, the Commission forwarded the notifications on across other Member States.
The company took umbrage at this saying that the information submitted by the Austrian authorities should have included amongst other things batch numbers and as luck would have it, Funke had a legal right to ask for a judicial review after the authorities refused to act. Full details of the case can be found here; Advocate General ?apeta: economic operators have the right to request the completion of a RAPEX notification on the basis of the Treaty provisions concerning the free movement of goods (europa.eu)
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Step in the Supreme Administrative Court of Austria who then submitted a series of questions to the COJ Court.?The plot thickens as this then led to the?Advocate General proposing that economic operators have the right to request the completion of a RAPEX notification from Article 34 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and that an incomplete notification is an unjustified obstacle to trade.?At a high level effective regulatory delivery can only be achieved by close collaboration between the regulator and the businesses they regulate. Ill leave it to you to decide whether this principle is being followed in this particular case.
From my own experiences in a past life, RAPEX is crammed full of useless information that is of no use to man, beast or TSO…from a traceability point of view it’s often not fit for purpose.?
I will certainly be keeping a keen eye on all this hoping that PRISM will shine a positive spectrum of light across the management of risk for consumer products and consumer protection.
For any businesses out there exporting product into the EU and needing help to navigate the ins and outs of risk management, DM me.?