The Commission of the European Union (EU) has released statistics on notices of unsafe, non-food consumer products that have been processed through the EU’s rapid information system (RAPEX) for the year ending December 31, 2019.
According to the Commission’s report, 2243 notifications of products posing a serious risk to consumer health and safety were processed through the RAPEX system during 2019. This represents a negligible decrease from 2018’s 2259 notifications and is generally consistent with results from the past several years.
Once again, toys represent the product category with the most notifications, with 29% of all notifications processed (compared with 31% in 2018). Motor vehicles were again in second place again this year, with 23% of notifications (up from 19% the prior year), followed by clothing, textiles and fashion items with 8 percent (down from 10%). Rounding out the top five categories of notifications were electrical appliance and equipment, which accounted for 8 percent of notifications processed (same as 2018), and cosmetic products, which accounted for 6 percent (down from 7%).
Regarding the country of origin identified in connection with products posing a serious safety risk, the Commission’s report omits explicit data regarding notifications involving individual countries other than those in the EU. However, the report does note that still more than half (51%) of alerts issued in the EU were for dangerous products originating from China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. At the same time, nearly 30% of alerts were issued in connection with dangerous products originated from EU Member States, up from just 24% in 2018, An additional 15% of alerts were triggered by products from other, unknown countries.
View the complete text of the EU Commission’s 2019 annual report on RAPEX statistics.
