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Cooperation between national authorities responsible for the assessment, market surveillance and enforcement of the safety of non-food consumer products and the Chinese authority with matching responsibilities (the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine – AQSIQ)

The Joint Action started in July 2013 and will run for 36 months. It is coordinated by PROSAFE. The project leader is the Netherlands. The participating countries are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The overall purpose of the Joint Action will be to increase the cooperation between the Chinese export control authorities and the European customs and market surveillance authorities. The aim is to decrease the share of unsafe products on the European market.
The Joint Action will explore three paths to achieve this:

  1. Alignment of the Chinese export control scheme with the European import control scheme to assure that both have the same output and quality.
  2. An information exchange scheme where the Chinese can share information about consignments that have been inspected from their end. If such information is found to be reliable and useful, it can be used to guide the European import control to focus on consignments that haven't been checked (and thus should contain more unsafe products).
  3. An information exchange scheme where the European authorities can share information about unsafe (Chinese) products so the Chinese authorities can trace them and mend the shortcomings at the source. (Such a system will complement the China-RAPEX system where similar information is exchanged on products posing a serious risk.)

The Joint Action will continue to work with Rotterdam as the pilot harbour (on request of the Chinese Authorities) using toys as the example product. However, the perspective should be wider to ensure that it will be possible to apply the findings to other product areas and to other European entry points.