Product Safety and Market Surveillance: IMCO votes for dossier resumption

The Internal Market and Consumer Protection Parliamentary Committee decided yesterday to resume the work on seven legislative dossiers which were left open from last mandate. Generally, all Parliament unfinished business shall be deemed to have elapsed after the parliamentary term finishes, but according to rule 299 of the EP Rules of Procedure, the Conference on Presidents can agree to carry on the work and thus ask to the Committees to screen their previous work and formally vote for a progression. Along these lines, IMCO Committee agreed with an overwhelming majority to carry on seven files, among which the ones dealing with new product safety rules and market surveillance. On 13 February 2013 the European Commission adopted a comprehensive package on Product Safety and Market Surveillance in order to improve safety of consumer products, in particular by strengthening product identification and traceability, and to simplify and improve the framework of market surveillance of products. The package consists of two legislative initiatives: a proposal for a new Regulation on Consumer Product Safety and a proposal for a single Regulation on Market Surveillance of Products; both proposals were adopted by the EP at first reading on 15^th April 2014, but both files were blocked due to a deadlock over article 7 of the proposal for a Regulation on Consumer Product Safety. With this new vote, MEPs will work on existing basis, avoiding a withdrawal of the long work they carried on in the last mandate.