Joint Action 2012

Joint Market Surveillance Action 2012 is a project coordinated by PROSAFE and co-funded by the European Commision in the framework of the ‘Programme of Community action in the field of Consumer policy (2007-2013). 

Timeline: The project formally commenced on 1 January 2013 and will run for 28 months until 30 April 2015.
Newsletter: PROSAFE organised the JA2012 Final Conference on 11 February 2015, which was attended by 49 representatives from the Member States, the European Commission and stakeholders. For mor einformation please check the Newsletter.

Threefold structure

• The method development activities (MDAs) purporting to develop methodologies and infrastructure that will support the market surveillance work in the Member States (and in PROSAFE).The project is a single Action of joint pan-European market surveillance activities. It includes three groups of tasks:
• The project management activities will help address a number of horizontal activities that cut across all product-specific activities and include: co-operation with Customs; outreach to China; international co-operation; coordination of dissemination and use of results by all Member States; stakeholder outreach and other communications activities; follow-up with standards organisations; e-commerce.
• Product-specific activities are (vertical) activities aiming to increase the safety with a specific product or product category. These are:  
  • Childcare Articles - Highchairs
  • Nanotechnology and Cosmetics
  • Cords and Drawstrings
  • Ladders 2
  • CO and smoke detectors

Objectives

The overall programme seeks to co-ordinate the product-specific market surveillance activities in the most efficient manner and provides an opportunity for further evaluating the best practices originally developed under the two EMARS projects, the 2009 Joint Actions, JA2010 and JA2011. The objectives of the product-specific activities are to ensure that the concerned products are safe and carry the appropriate warnings and instructions. The nanotechnology activity aims to monitor the presence of cosmetic products containing nanomaterials.

In respect of the MDAs, we can identify the following specific objectives:
- Maintenance, implementation and further development of the existing best practice
- Operation of existing systems such as the Rapid Advice Forum, the Knowledge Base and other initiatives such as the CIMS
- Further development and roll out of our e-learning initiative focused on the GPSD and development of further e-learning packages focused on risk assessment.
- The development of an operational protocol to deliver a 'Home Authority' solution for Europe.

The participants

Twenty-four EEA Member States are participating within the financial framework of the project: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom. Two countries are participating as observers outside the financial scheme: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey.