JA2016 Risk Assessment Templates for Market Surveillance 

PROSAFE continuously supports Market Surveillance Authorities (MSAs) by enhancing their cooperation in the GPSD Joint Actions, which receive funding from the European Union. This time, such collaboration in JA2016 resulted in creation of Risk Assessment Templates facilitating performing of Risk Assessment activities by MSAs.

In order to determine how dangerous a non-compliant product is, Authorities take the following steps. Firstly, the product is being tested against its relevant harmonised standards determining whether the product is compliant with the safety requirements or not. If the product is found to be non-compliant, a Risk Assessment take place evaluating what risk level a product poses to consumers. This is when the Risk Assessment Templates produced by PROSAFE in the framework of the EU-funded GPSD Joint Actions are being used. If the risk presented by a product is found to be too high, action is necessary to (i) decrease the risk by demanding corrective actions from the producer or (ii) remove the risk by withdrawing the product from the market.

The Risk Assessment Templates designed for certain product categories encourage consistent approach in Risk Assessment of associated products. The Templates are being an outcome of best practices used by 32 Market Surveillance Authorities from 25 Member States of the European Economic Area.

Risk Assessment is one of the core activities implemented by PROSAFE since 2006 via a Risk Assessment Group, enabling training of MSAs in practical application of Risk Assessment methods through product-targeted Joint Actions. Such a cooperation results in improvement of market surveillance in the European Union and beyond thanks to the funds the EU has made available to support this work.