OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched a new initiative directed at product safety last year within the framework of the activities of their Committee on Consumer Policy (CCP). The stated purpose of the initiative in the CCP’s Work Programme from 2008 is to develop an approach for improving the collection and sharing of information on products that pose health and safety risks to consumers. The OECD hosted a Roundtable in Paris in October. The aim of the Roundtable was to examine consumer product safety trends and challenges at both domestic and international levels. A draft report of the roundtable has been prepared and has been circulated to the members of the ICPSC. The initial discussions around this work item last year foresaw the completion of an analytic report by the third quarter of 2009 a workshop or conference by the first quarter of 2010 and the development of information exchange system and/or protocol by the fourth quarter of 2010. One of the national delegations is now considering how to take the work forward and a document is to be discussed at the end of March.

UN-ECE
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe operates a Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies (WP.6). The working party operates a group of experts on market surveillance “Advisory Group on Market Surveillance” (MARS Group). The MARS group has taken the lead in organising a number of seminars and is developing a General Market Surveillance Procedure (GMSP).  The Working party and the MARS group meet on an annual basis in October and November respectively.

Tri-Lateral Co-operation
A joint EU-US-China Initiative on Consumer Product Safety Compliance took place in the People's Republic of China, from 19-24 September 2008. The initiative aimed to increase awareness and understanding of consumer safety regulations in the US and Europe among Chinese manufacturers and make US and EU regulators more familiar with China's manufacturing practices. The initiative continued with a high level summit in Brussels in November during the International Product Safety Week hosted there by the European Commission. The tripartite participants agreed that a number of specific actions have priority within the overall cooperation framework. These include product traceability, comparing the existing toy standards, collaborating more closely in the field of children’s products, soliciting stakeholder participation and exploring the potential for exchange visits among expert staff members. The participants also agreed to meet again in 2009 to take stock of progress made and discuss further cooperative efforts.

ISO-COPOLCO
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) operates a consumer policy committee (ISO-COPOLCO). COPOLCO has taken the lead in ISO in considering in its own product safety working group (WG.4) some new product safety-related work items. A new project committee (SO/PC 240, Product recall) was established in 2008 to develop a market-oriented international standard to help organizations plan and execute timely and cost effective product recalls, minimizing legal risks, and contributing to customer satisfaction and loyalty. The standard will provide a code of good practice for establishing, implementing and managing an effective, flexible and responsive consumer product recall programme, with corrective actions, including repair, placement, re-purchase and public notice. It will also provide guidance on products in the manufacturer’s or distributor’s inventory or retail shelves, or already in the hands of consumers. The ISO member body, DSM, Department of Standards Malaysia, is providing the secretariat of the group. There have also been discussions within ISO surrounding the drafting of a consumer product safety management guide or consumer product safety practical guidance for suppliers. There will be an informal meeting of the product safety working group of ISO-COPOLCO on the Friday after the ICPSC meeting. COPOLCO itself meets annually in May.

ISO-CASCO
Another committee operated by ISO is the policy development committee on conformity assessment, CASCO. CASCO held a workshop in the on the 29th of October 2008 to discuss conformity assessment standards in support of market surveillance. The aims of the workshop were to:
• Identify good market surveillance practices at the national level.
• Raise awareness and capacity to use the CASCO toolbox in market
surveillance activities.
• Investigate market surveillance activities related to the oversight
processes for conformity assessment activities.
• Identify actions when a product does not comply.
CASCO at the request of the workshop will now develop an action plan to
address:
• How to facilitate rapid sharing of information on market surveillance.
• Possible future ISO publications on good market surveillance practice.
• Market surveillance in the area of services.
• Promotion of existing ISO standards.

ICPHSO
The International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organisation (ICPHSO) provides a unique multi-stakeholder forum within which to discuss non-food consumer product safety issues. ICPHSO holds an annual meeting in February in the USA. ICPHSO has also held bi-annual meetings in Europe and one meeting to date in Asia (China). Plans are afoot for further international meetings. Regional meetings are also held in the USA and there is a tentative proposal for one in Canada in the autumn of this year. The ICPSC has its origins in an international workshop held during an ICPHSO meeting.

Safety 2010 10th World Injury Prevention and safety Promotion, 21st – 24th September 2010, London
This series of bi-annual conferences have been co-sponsored by the World Health Organisation. The tenth conference in the series will be held in London. Traditionally the conferences are very much focused on a public health approach to injury prevention and safety promotion but in the past some attention has been given to product safety issues and market surveillance. The key theme of the conference is Safe and Equitable Communities. The first formal announcement for Safety 2010 will be issued in January 2009 and the call for abstracts will open in April 2009.

Canada
Canada is advancing its proposal for a new Canada Consumer Product safety Act. The proposed new Canada Consumer Product Safety Act is a key component of Canada's Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan. The proposed Canada Consumer Product Safety Act would replace Part I of the Hazardous Products Act and introduce a new regulatory regime. The proposed new Act focuses on the following three key areas:
•    Working to Address Problems Before They Happen
•    Targeting the Highest Risks
•    Rapid Response
The Government of Canada will continue its efforts to protect the health and safety of Canadians by developing new regulations, including those on lead and phthalates in consumer products, together with suppliers and other stakeholders. Health Canada is planning outreach events to their stakeholders.

United States of America
The implementation of the Consumer Product safety Improvement Act continues. A number of important issues are being discussed within the framework of them implementation of the Act. These include product traceability, cooperation with Customs, third party testing and children’s products.

APEC
The Sub-Committee on Standards and Conformance of APEC held a capacity building workshop on Consumer product safety standards and practices in the Asia-Pacific region in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 10-12 November 2008. The broad objective of the workshop was to expose participants to the latest thinking and best practices on managing generic consumer product safety regulation, including products bans, recalls and safety standards.

Japan
A new Consumers Agency is being established in Japan to unify administrative functions within the government. Japan is also introducing some new requirements aimed at labeling and testing products for their useful life. This is to combat problems seen with products that are used over very extended periods of time.

China
AQSIQ has introduced changes to its export licence scheme and increased controls on certain consumer products. AQSIQ is also co-operating with the European Commission in the EU-CHINA Rapex scheme. Under this scheme the European Commission forwards relevant Rapex notifications to AQSIQ. In the two years since the launch of the system in August 2006 AQSIQ has followed up over 599 individual cases that have resulted in 303 cases where measures have been adopted. The operation of the system is discussed in regular meetings between the EU and China. The importance of risk assessment and the traceability of products has been highlighted in these discussions. 

Australia
Australia is engaged on implementing changes to the product safety framework that should see a more coordinated approach between the federal and state governments. The reforms agreed in May 2008 in the Ministerial Council on Consumer Affairs (MCCA) will remove legal uncertainty for businesses operating across state borders by creating a single national law for product safety, including product bans, standards and recalls; enhance protection for consumers by allowing the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the State and Territory offices of fair trading to jointly enforce the national law; and reduce regulatory overlap by giving the Commonwealth sole responsibility for making permanent product bans and safety standards.  The States and Territories will retain the power to issue interim product bans, which would remain in effect for 60 days with a capacity for a 30-day extension if necessary.

Standards Australia has developed and is helping to implement a new product safety framework concept for infant goods. Designed to enhance the safe supply, sale and use of products, the PSF is a horizontal approach that:
• identifies hazards using a risk assessment process;
• proves/disproves the hazard’s existence using a series of modular hazard tests;
• mitigates proven standards through design, protective equipment or education/warnings;
• complements and leverages proven standards throughout the supply chain to ultimately deliver safe products to consumers;
• can potentially apply to all products;
• is modular and therefore fast and easy to update; and
• provides a verification process that allows for validation.

The PSF has six parts:
• Part 1: Application Guide
• Part 2: Hazard Checklist
• Part 3: Generic requirement modules
• Part 4: Specific product guidelines
• Part 5: Information guides
• Part 6: Vertical application guides

Swedish Presidency of the European Union
The Swedish presidency of the European Union – Conference on goods in the EU internal market, September 11, Solna being organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Joint Actions
A number of joint market surveillance actions are co-financed by the European Commission. There is an annual call for projects each year. Some twelve projects have been supported since 2005. Four of these are presented in greater detail below. A full list is given in the annex to this paper. There is information exchange with both Canada and the USA in respect of some of these projects. The European Commission has also recently revised its cooperation agreement with China and this specifically foresees the possibility of cooperation between the EU and China on joint actions.

PROSAFE
PROSAFE is the Product Safety Enforcement Forum of Europe. PROSAEF brings together representatives from the national market surveillance authorities. PROSAFE coordinates work on a number of joint actions including EMARS and also facilitates the exchange of market surveillance officials, another EU sponsored programme. PROSAFE meetings are held twice a year in the spring and the autumn.

EMARS II
Enhancing market Surveillance through Best Practice II is new three year European Commission supported project launched late last year. The overall objective of the project is to further enhance the market surveillance of non-food consumer products in Europe. This is to be achieved through the practical application of the best practice developed under the first EMARS project and the development of additional best practices.  The project is structured around a number of core coordination tasks and eight specific tasks. These are
A.    Best Practice
B.    Management and Planning of Future Joint Actions and Coordinated Market Surveillance Activities
C.    Risk Assessment
D.    Market surveillance guidance material for external stakeholders
E.    Training
F.       Continuous improvement of national market surveillance programmes
G.    Standards related activities
H.    Liaison with Notified Bodies
The project is to be formally launched in Vienna in March. Workshops are planned annually and there will be a final conference in the autumn of 2011.

SUSYSAFE 
SUSYSAFE stands for Surveillance System on Suffocation Injuries due to Foreign Bodies in European children. Suffocation due to foreign bodies is a leading cause of death in children aged 0-3 and is also common in older age groups, up to 14 years. The aim of the SUSYSAFE project is to establish a surveillance registry for injuries due to the ingestion of non-food foreign bodies, to collect as much scientific data as possible and to serve as the basis for a knowledge-based consumer protection activity in the European market.?http://www.susysafe.org/

Baltic Sea Network
In the Baltic Sea Network Product Safety market surveillance authorities from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hamburg and Schleswig Holstein cooperate with each other. The main focus of the network is collaboration with the customs authorities. The network has described its activities in a series of annual reports and has published a comparative study of the national product safety legislation in force. The results of the work of the network were also presented to at a seminar in Hamburg last year.

Ban on DMF
The European Commission has adopted a draft Decision to ensure that consumer products, such as leather furniture or footwear, containing the strongly sensitising (DMF) are not placed on the market in the EU. The draft Commission decision is for an emergency EU wide measure, pending the adoption of a more permanent regulatory solution. DMF is already banned for use in the manufacture of goods in the EU, since biocidal products containing DMF are not authorised under the Biocides Directive (98/8/EC). However, manufacturers outside the EU may use these unauthorised biocides and then export their products to the EU. The proposed Decision therefore protects EU consumers from the risk of DMF in imported products in the same way as they are protected at home. A number of member states have already taken action. In December 2008, France adopted a decree, which bans the importation and placing on the market of seating and footwear containing DMF for 1 year. The French decree also requires the recall of all seating and footwear which visibly contains, or the packaging of which visibly contains, DMF. In January 2009, Belgium issued a decree, which bans the placing on the market of all articles and products containing DMF. Spain is considering introducing a measure.

Workshop on EMF and Health
The Commission's independent Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) has published an updated opinion on possible health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF). Based on current evidence the main conclusions remain that radio frequency fields used in wireless communication technologies are unlikely to lead to an increase in cancer in the human population at large. However, further studies are needed to clarify if long-term exposure to mobile phones (well beyond 10 years) increases cancer risk for an individual using a mobile phone frequently and to examine the effects on children. Furthermore, the updated opinion identified 2 new epidemiological studies that indicate a possible link to Alzheimer's disease. These are serious matters and further investigation will be pursued. Given the seriousness of these issues and noting the growing public concern on this subject as well as the absence of clear scientific evidence on many questions, the Commission will hold a workshop on EMF and Health on 11 and 12 February. The workshop will bring together scientists, stakeholders and policy makers to discuss the latest scientific assessments on EMF and health and generate a constructive policy dialogue.

Stakeholder's conference on Personal Music Players
The European Commission (DG Health and Consumers and DG Enterprise and Industry) organised a one-day Stakeholders' Conference on Personal Music Players on 27 January 2009 in Brussels. The decision to organize the conference was based on an Opinion by the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) on "Potential health risks of exposure to noise from personal music players and mobile phones including a music playing function", which was released on 13 October 2008. Scientists confirmed that there is cause for concern since 5-10% of personal music player listeners risk permanent hearing loss if they listen to a personal music player for more than one hour per day each week at high volume settings for a period of at least 5 years. The aim of the European Commission in organizing this conference was to examine the way forward, together with the EU Member States, scientists, industry, consumer organizations, Members of the European Parliament and other key stakeholders.

Implementation of the New Legislative Framework
The Council adopted a legislative package aimed at facilitating free movement of goods within the internal market by removing remaining barriers to trade, and at enhancing competitiveness and safety for consumers. Two of the instruments contained in the package impact on market surveillance. The regulation setting out the requirements for accreditation, market surveillance and controls of products entering the Community market (3614/08); and ? the decision setting out a common framework for the marketing of products (3615/08).
These instruments review, update and strengthen the "new approach" system that was established in 1985. The "new approach" put into place a system enabling the Commission to mandate the drawing up of technical specifications by European standardisation organisations, in order to comply with the harmonised level of safety required for products. In particular, the regulation is aimed at reinforcing market surveillance mechanisms and ensuring that products circulating throughout the EU respect a high level of protection of public interests. Requirements are being placed on member states to develop and publish annual market surveillance programmes. The decision on the marketing of products provides tools for future technical harmonisation allowing sectoral adaptation. New features will also reinforce clarity of the EC marking and the conformity of the products. The Commission is now proceeding with the implementation of the measures contained in the regulation.

A European Consumer Safety Mark and CE Marking
The European Commission have published a staff working document on the "feasibility of a consumer safety mark and its possible relation to CE marking"
This document sets out the legal and technical analysis carried out by the Commission on the feasibility of a consumer safety mark as well as stakeholders’ perception on the issue. An extensive consultation was held on the working document. The results of the consultation are summarized in the report "Evaluation of the feasibility of a consumer safety mark".