Rapid Advice Forum

European Market Surveillance Authorities (MSAs) often find themselves in a situation in which they have to decide if a certain product conforms to the requirements of the applicable Union legislation and the product-specific provisions and standards.

In many cases, determining non-compliance in the context of a product inspection or testing campaign can be challenging for various reasons, relative to national legal variations, the complexity of the supply chain, information assymetries, or resource limitations.

MSAs often find themselves in a situation in which they have to decide if a certain product conforms to the general safety requirement of a certain directive (e.g. GPSD, LVD, Toys, PPE …), or even if a product is covered by these legislations. In these cases, it is necessary to make a judgement call based on experience and the results of a risk analysis.

Peer-to-Peer information and feedback mechanisms can boost the spread of knowledge and good practices between MSAs and therefore help bridge topical gaps and asymmetries in protecting the health and safety of the European consumers, the Single Market and the environment.

This is the function and the utility of PROSAFE’s Rapid Advice e-Forum (RAF), an ICT-supported tool, which was first developed and piloted under the Joint Action 2013 (JA2013). After several iterations and upgrades in the context of numerous successor Joint Actions, the new latest version of RAF has now been introduced and integrated into the Wiki Confluence used by the EEPLIANT3 Concerted Action on ecodesign and energy labelling. As in previous iterations, the goal is to capitalise on the accumulated knowledge and experience by enabling quick unmediated exchanges on market surveillance issues between the participating inspectors.