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Market surveillance: A new arena for civil society

Panel: 8. Monitoring and evaluation: building confidence and enhancing practices

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Alun Jones, Belgium

Abstract

Highlighting mislabelling, mis-representation, or outright breaches of regulations of products and services on the market is not a new concept for civil society. However the single market offers new challenges for regulatory officials and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) alike. The monitoring, testing, verification, and enforcement of a non-compliant product are lengthy, resource intensive, require significant expertise, and rely on the availability of laboratories to produce the technical evidence for action.

With existing measures of Ecodesign and Energy Labels, how will the EU ensure that the hundreds of millions of products entering the market each year are compliant, thus ensuring the full energy saving potential is reached? And what is the role of civil society in this ambition?

MarketWatch offers the first EU-wide CSO network that is dedicated to market surveillance. Its focus is the implementing measures and regulatory requirements for the EU’s Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Directives. Its goal is to encourage further action at both national and EU level, to ensure that these Directives do not fall into a state where they are unwilling or unable to be enforced. We aim to provide insight and intelligence on suspected cases of non-compliance of both retailers and manufacturers.

In early 2014, MarketWatch compiled and summarised the findings of numerous studies, reports and observations on the accuracy of the energy label into one simple message: 1 in 5 products are incorrectly labelled. This simple yet clear message to consumers has led to over 100 news articles and radio debates on the work of MarketWatch.

300 in-store, and further 300 on-line inspections across 10 countries will inspect over 150,000 products. The first round of inspections has revealed that despite efforts from authorities there is still a significant absence of the Energy Label in some stores. With innovative and cost-effective check-testing methods being developed alongside fully standardised testing for 20 products, will MarketWatch be able to integrate civil society in to the new and complex field, and what will be the benefits to Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Directives?

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