Safer products for all : 2022 results.
Date: 2023-04-05
Institutions: Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers
Subjects: consumer information, consumer protection, dangerous substance, defective product, exchange of information, food safety, information system, product safety, public health, safety standard, single market

SafetyGate

SAFER 
PRODUCTS 
FOR ALL 
2022  
RESULTS

DG Justice  
and Consumers

EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers
Directorate Consumers
Unit B.4 Product Safety and Rapid Alert System
E-mail: JUST-RAPEX@ec.europa.eu

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This document has been prepared for the European Commission however it reflects the views only of the authors, 
and the European Commission is not liable for any consequence stemming from the reuse of this publication. 
More information on the European Union is available on the Internet (http://www.europa.eu).

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Print

ISBN 978-92-68-00279-7
ISBN 978-92-68-00283-4

doi 10.2838/174316
doi 10.2838/859842

DS-09-23-077-EN-N
DS-09-23-077-EN-C

Manuscript completed in February 2023

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CONTENTS

1. SAFETY GATE: MORE THAN A SIMPLE EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION ........ 6

A. ALERTS IN 2022: CHANGE OF GEAR ................................................................................ 9

B. FOLLOW-UPS IN 2022: A BOUNCE BACK ...................................................................... 12

2. MAKING SURE PRODUCT SAFETY IS INDEED FOR ALL ............................... 14

A. THE GPSD WILL BECOME GPSR ..................................................................................... 14

B. COORDINATED ACTIVITIES ON THE SAFETY OF PRODUCTS ....................................... 14

C. TRACKING DANGEROUS PRODUCTS FOR SALE ONLINE ............................................. 16

D. RAISING THE BAR FOR PRODUCT SAFETY WITH INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS ......... 18

3. THE SAFETY GATE WEBSITE ..........................................................................  20

4. ABOUT THIS REPORT ....................................................................................  22

     FOREWORD

2022 was yet another challenging year. With the progressive 
easing of covid-19 related restrictions, consumers went 
back to former habits of shopping, entertainment, and 
hobbies. Retailers and manufacturers strived to recover 
from economic disruption and enhance consumer trust. 
The tragedy of the unprovoked war of aggression against 
Ukraine also spilled more burden on already strained supply 
chains, and worsened a looming inflation, with dramatic 
impact for consumers. 

Although the specific economic climate had an influence on 
Safety Gate results in 2022, it never interrupted the activity of 
any of the actors involved. Testing and inspections carried on 
and national authorities responsible for market surveillance 
continued their tireless work to keep dangerous products 
out of reach of consumers. More than ever, they resorted 
to new technologies and tools such as the e-surveillance 
web crawler to trace dangerous products identified in the 
rapid alert system that were still for sale online. Thanks to 
the good cooperation in the context of the Product Safety 
Pledge, the takedown of these dangerous products by online 
platforms signatories was swift and efficient. 

This year was also a milestone towards exploring new 
horizons in product safety with the 2022 edition of the 
International Product Safety Week, which attracted 
640 participants from 73 countries. Among all its impactful 

Didier Reynders,
EU Commissioner for Justice

messages, it is worth highlighting the important role 
younger generations play in improving awareness about 
product safety. Young product safety ambassadors at global 
level are helping us in this task. 

Last but not least, with the upcoming General Product 
Safety Regulation, which will replace the General Product 
Safety Directive by end 2024, we are reaching for an even 
higher level of product safety for all consumers, whatever 
their age, habits and vulnerabilities. 

5

1.  SAFETY GATE:  
MORE THAN A SIMPLE 
EXCHANGE OF 
INFORMATION

The free movement of goods is an important achievement 
that has improved the lives of all citizens in the European 
Single market. A fair single market involves common agreed 
rules applicable to all economic players operating in it. 

All producers, distributors, retailers and online marketplaces 
have the important responsibility to keep our market safe. 
They work to ensure their products have the necessary 
quality and comply with the health and safety requirements 
imposed on any product placed on the market. 

National authorities responsible for market surveillance 
monitor the respect of the rules by economic operators. 
When this is not the case, they take measures to ban or 
restrict the sale of the dangerous products detected, stop 
them at the border or order their recall. When a national 
authority in one of the countries in the single market takes 
a measure against a dangerous product, it is crucial that this 
information be shared with all other national authorities 
in the other countries, so that action can be effectively taken 
by the authorities on our single market. This is the role of the 
Safety Gate system. 

6

Every day, national authorities from 30 countries  
(EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway)  
enter information in the system about measures taken 
against dangerous products found on their market.  
The information, in the form of alerts, is immediately visible 
to all the other authorities, who can then inspect their own 
markets and take measures themselves, if needed. National 
authorities also introduce information about these additional 
measures and/or any other useful information in the form of 
a follow-up linked to the corresponding alert. The measures 
taken may affect but are not limited to small batches of a 
product identified as posing risks for consumers. 

On average, about 50 new alerts and follow-ups are 
circulated through the system every day. A dedicated team 
in the European Commission checks their accuracy and 
circulates them through the network. Summaries of these 
alerts are also published on the public website of the system 
and machine-translated into the official languages of all 
countries in the single market. Since 2022, translations are 
also provided in Ukrainian, and as from 2023, this is also 
the case for Arabic. Moreover, the European Commission 
publishes a weekly reports with the latest alerts received. 
Anyone can subscribe to receive this weekly review by 
email in any of the language versions and according to their 
preferred criteria. 

Over the years, the Safety Gate system has been 
complemented with a series of other modules and tools.  
This is to further improve its quality and efficiency and to 
facilitate and further speed up exchanges between the 
European Commission and national authorities, as well as 
to exchange best practice. One of its current priorities is 
to provide interoperability solutions to allow for automatic 
exchanges of information between the rapid alert system 
and other enforcement and information systems used by 
the different authorities, consumer and trade associations 
and industry. This will help both industry and authorities 
to swiftly react when information on an unsafe product 
detected on the market becomes available.

!

50 NEW ALERTS  
AND FOLLOW-UPS  
are circulated through  
the system every day.

7

The exchange of information about non-food dangerous 
products kicked off informally in 2001 and became 
compulsory after the adoption of the General Product Safety 
Directive. The Directive set up the Rapid Alert System for 
non-food dangerous products, currently called Safety Gate. 
The General Product Safety Regulation adopts it as the new 
official name of the EU rapid alert system for dangerous non-
food products.

The alerts concern consumer products and products for 
professional use (but do not include pharmaceuticals, 
medical devices, food or animal feedstuffs). The types of risk 
taken into account include risks to human health and safety, 
going from choking, strangulation and damage to hearing 
or sight to hazards caused by chemicals. The system also 
includes measures taken against products that pose  
a security risk or risks to the environment. 

NUMBER OF ALERTS 
CIRCULATED ON SAFETY GATE
FROM 2003 TO 2022

2244

2306

2382 2447

1699

1545

1355

1802

2257

2248

2142

2243

2133

2044

2140

2117

924

701

468

139

8

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011 2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

A. ALERTS IN 2022:  
CHANGE OF GEAR

10  10

10  10

In 2022, the number of alerts validated on Safety Gate 
remained around the level of the previous 5 years.  
However, there were major changes in the number 
of alerts notified per country. German alerts  
dropped by more than 22%, as did those form 
Portugal, triggered most likely by a general drop 
in the motor vehicle industry sales. Both these 
countries are historically the countries that 
filed the highest number of alerts on  
motor vehicles. 

49

87

49

87

On the other hand, countries that historically  
were less active in lodging notifications such as  
Austria, Czechia, Latvia and Norway more than  
doubled the number of their alerts. In total,  
2 117 alerts were validated in 2022. 

64

79

64

79

16

8

16

8

13

27

13

27
64     123

44

7

44

7

182     136

182     136

67 18

67 18

45 38

554

64     123

158

173

45 38

107   41

554

26   47

430

107   41

212

26   47

158

430

173

43

80

41 43

43

80
22   45

41 43

162     139

212

  202

  202

22   45

13 13

162     139

13 13
41

19

23

51
19

23

41

51

45  23

45  23

7

11

7

11

ALERTS VALIDATED ON SAFETY GATE IN 2022 
BY NOTIFYING COUNTRY, COMPARED TO 2021

13

31

13

31

49

88

49

88

66

66

66

66

2

7

2

7

45  33

45  33

9

The number of alerts for the category “motor vehicles” 
dropped from 26% in 2021 to 16% of the total of alerts.  
The category “toys” is again first in number of alerts validated 
in 2022.

Significant changes also in the other categories reflect the 
focus of enforcement authorities on cosmetic products 

and clothing. Moreover, there was a drop on protective 
equipment, from 8% in 2021 to 4% in 2022. This drop reflects 
the smaller presence on the market of products employed 
to protect consumers against COVID-19. However, this 
percentage shows that national authorities remained vigilant 
on these products.

Others
28%

Protective 
equipment
8%

Jewellery
9%

Motor  
vehicules
26%

Others
34%

2021

2022

Toys
23%

Motor  
vehicules
16%

Toys
20%

Electrical  
appliances
& equipment
8%

Electrical 
appliances
& equipment
9%

Clothings  
textile & 
 fashion items
9%

Cosmetics
10%

10

5 MOST FREQUENT PRODUCT CATEGORIES OF  
SAFETY GATE ALERTS IN 2022, COMPARED TO 2021

The drop in “motor vehicle” alerts also has an effect in the 
types of risk most frequently signalled in the alerts in 2022. 
The risk of injuries, generally linked with “motor vehicle” 
alerts, dropped from 32% in 2021 to 21% in 2022. The rise 
of risks linked to chemicals in the products is related to the 

increase of alerts for cosmetic products. Indeed national 
authorities focussed controls and reported several kinds 
of perfume and creams with recently banned chemical 
substances, such as butylphenyl methylpropional (BMHCA) 
and hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde (HICC).

Other risks 
12%

Choking 
10%

Electric 
shock
10%

Fire
11%

2021

Injuries 
32%

Fire
9%

Electric 
shock
9%

Choking 
14%

Other risks 
8%

2022

Chemical 
35% 

Chemical 
25% 

Injuries 
25%

5 MOST FREQUENT TYPES OF RISK IN  
SAFETY GATE ALERTS IN 2022, COMPARED TO 2021

11

B. FOLLOW-UPS IN 2022:  
A BOUNCE BACK

A large proportion of follow-ups on Safety Gate report on 
additional measures following the recall of a motor vehicle. 
This is because once a motor vehicle is recalled in one 
country, the network of distributors react immediately to 
that information and recalls are organised in all the other 
countries where the vehicle was sold. It is therefore not 
a surprise that in 2022, with the drop in the share of alerts 
related to motor vehicles, the number of follow-ups dropped 
as well. 

In total 3 932 follow-up notices were circulated in Safety 
Gate. All Member States have followed up the alerts regularly 
and additionally exchanged information on this. There were 
large differences in the number of follow-ups submitted 
by each country compared to previous years. In 84% of the 
follow-ups, the information included additional measures 
taken in their own countries, which shows that although 
there were fewer follow-ups in 2022, the follow-up on the 
alert resulted more often in an additional measure.

The largest share of follow-ups in 2022 is still related to 
measures taken on motor vehicles, although less than in 
previous years (85% in 2021, 80% in 2022). The proportion 
of follow-ups related to alerts on measures taken against 
products of other categories has therefore increased: the 
category “toys” raised from 4% to 6%.

12

58

51

58

51

58

51

FOLLOW-UPS ON SAFETY GATE  
IN 2022 BY REACTING COUNTRY, 
COMPARED TO 2021

246

178

155

26

226

220

256

299

155

26

299

220

280

155

26

201

201

12

206

280

201

66
280

99

189

105

220

299

51

62

105

10

436

226

256

226

189

256

105

51

62

105

10
189

105

51

62

343

105

10

246

178

246

178

12

206

16

36

296

12

131

206

66

99

436

9

2

256

343

205

436

343

16

36

445

265

296

131

66

99

24

24

16

36
9

2

256

266

205

232

150

130

99

67

9

2

256

205

296

24

24

131

36

21

150

130

445

265

266

232

21

36

21

36

150

100

150

24

24

99
100

67

266

232

150

130

489

325

99

67

325

220

106

489

150

100

489

325

445

265

350

364

44

66

350

44

66

364

44

66

350

364

106

220

39 13

106

220

3

3

3

3

13

3

3

39 13

39 13

2. MAKING SURE PRODUCT 
SAFETY IS INDEED FOR ALL 
 A. THE GPSD WILL BECOME GPSR 

At the end of 2022, EU lawmakers reached a political 
agreement on the new General Product Safety Regulation, 
which will replace the General Product Safety Directive 
dating from 2001. This new Regulation provides significant 
improvements to the current framework, and responds, 
among other issues, to the challenges posed by new 
technologies and the growth of online sales. 

It will also ensure a better enforcement of the rules and 
even more efficient market surveillance, as well as improve 
recalls of dangerous products. The Commission’s proposal 
also specifically addresses the challenges of online sales, 
including sales via online marketplaces.

B. COORDINATED ACTIVITIES  
ON THE SAFETY OF PRODUCTS 

The Coordinated Activities on the Safety of Products (CASP), 
financed by the EU Consumer budget, provide the national 
authorities responsible for market surveillance with a specific 
framework and funding to jointly test products and agree on 
common positions and procedures, and to share knowledge 
and best practice. CASP is also a forum for discussion in an 
ever-changing European context. 

For each project cycle, representatives of national authorities 
participate actively in several product-specific activities 
and more general “horizontal” activities. As a result of 
these, guidance documents are set up which are useful for 
the authorities work. In particular in the product specific 
activities, the testing of products enables the participating 
authorities to act in a coordinated way against those found 
to pose risks to the health and safety of consumers, and to 
notify such cases at European level via Safety Gate.

CASP 2019 was the first year of coordinated activities with 
the new financing system. In that year, the activity providing 
for the testing of slime toys attracted the largest number of 
participants. CASP 2020 focused on online product safety 
related activities. CASP 2021, along with testing and more 
general activities, included a new pilot activity that dealt 

14

with the link between counterfeit and dangerous products. 
Moreover, as international cooperation is very important in 
the consumer product safety area, stakeholders from other 
jurisdictions, such as Canada and South Korea, contributed 
to the discussions on online market surveillance practices.

CASP 2022 has been continuing to prioritise market 
surveillance authorities’ high demand for tackling challenges 

linked to enforcement regarding online selling. The general 
discussions include topics around the use of blockchain, 
and explores working methods for the growing phenomenon 
of direct shipping from countries outside the EU. Testing 
campaigns were conducted among items such as baby 
strollers, travel adaptors and hygiene products. The final 
results will be communicated during the closing event, 
planned for the third quarter of 2023.

15

C. TRACKING DANGEROUS  
PRODUCTS FOR SALE ONLINE 

The European Commission has also been exploring the 
possibilities to go beyond legal requirements with additional 
voluntary commitments. In 2018, the Commission set up a 
non-legislative voluntary cooperation mechanism with online 
marketplaces to improve the safety of products sold online 
– the Product Safety Pledge. The 11 current signatories 
of the Product Safety Pledge cooperate with national 
authorities to swiftly and efficiently take out any dangerous 
products detected on their platforms. They also made other 
commitments, including increasing trader education on 
product safety rules and the use of new technologies for 
detecting unsafe products.

To give concrete examples, the figures below, based on the 
latest monitoring report on the Pledge (covering the 6-month 
period December 2021 to May 2022) demonstrate well how 
this mechanism works: 

98%

of identified product listings 
were removed by the  
11 signatories within 

2 

working days, based on 
governmental notices.

This corresponds  
to the removal of

159 784

unsafe product  
listings based on

2 315

governmental notices.

In addition, the Pledge mechanism has become  
an important cooperation avenue, as it is used more  
and more systematically both by authorities and signatory 
marketplaces to tackle emerging issues. 

This instrument has served as an inspiration for authorities 
in other jurisdictions (such as the Australian Competition and 
Consumer Commission, the Korea Fair Trade Commission 
and Korea’s Consumer Agency and Health Canada).  
The OECD Working Party on Consumer Product Safety has 
also adopted a communiqué on product safety pledges and 
a policy guidance document on consumer product safety 
pledges. Their objective is to encourage the development 
of further such pledges at domestic and regional levels and 
identify key commitments for inclusion in such pledges. 

The success of the Product Safety Pledge encouraged 
the Commission to start discussions on how to widen this 
scheme during the Consumer Summit in February 2022. 

The Commission also supported the launch of an innovative 
pilot project enhancing cooperation between consumer 
organisations and online marketplaces signatories of  
the Pledge. This pilot was announced November 2022 
during the Annual Digital Consumer Event.

Furthermore, in 2022 the Commission launched a new tool 
to increase the capacity of national authorities to trace 
online offers of dangerous products that have already been 
signalled on Safety Gate. The e-Surveillance webcrawler 
identifies and automatically lists any of such offer, allowing 
enforcement authorities to track down the provider and 
order the effective withdrawal of the sales of such products. 

16

  
National authorities from all the countries participating 
in Safety Gate have access to this application and have 
been using it actively: approximately 95 000 searches 
are performed every week, with up to 720 results. 

The application uses integrated keywords in 24 EU languages 
and performs image searches. This enables it to detect 
results with a very high level of accuracy. During the first  
9 months of operation, the tool detected 5 068 online offers 
from 2 079 webshops and online marketplaces concerning 
499 Safety Gate alerts of unsafe products that should be 
removed from sale. 

Developments on the system will continue throughout 2023 
to further improve its user-friendliness and efficiency. 
These relate to increases in the search intervals and further 
interconnectivity between the eSurveillance webcrawler and 
Safety Gate, enabling the automatic creation of alerts and 
follow ups in Safety Gate from the webcrawler results.  
The Commission is also developing a module to improve 
direct communication with online sellers about offers 
detected on their platforms, as well as on a new platform  
to facilitate further exchanges of information at international 
level about dangerous products found on the market.

17

D. RAISING THE BAR FOR  
PRODUCT SAFETY WITH  
INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

As product safety has no borders, international cooperation 
on product safety is essential to ensure consumers are 
protected wherever they are, in the EU and worldwide. 

In 2022, half of Safety Gate alerts concerned products  
of Chinese origin: 

Since 2006, the Commission has been closely cooperating 
with the Chinese authorities responsible for product 
safety. These authorities follow up on Safety Gate 
notifications to ensure that appropriate corrective action  
is taken against dangerous products originating from China. 
A specific EU-China Safety Gate platform was created for 
this purpose. In addition, since 2019, a comprehensive 
information and training programme (SPEAC) has been 
strongly raising awareness among Chinese economic 
operators about the EU product safety requirements. 

EU and EEA 
22%

Unknown 
11%

Other countries 
17%

18

ALERTS VALIDATED  
ON SAFETY GATE IN 2022, BY GROUPS  
OF COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN OF THE 
DANGEROUS PRODUCTS

People’s Republic  
of China (including  
Hong Kong) 
50%

An informal dialogue on consumer product safety with 
the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) 
was launched in April 2022 to further strengthen the 
longstanding excellent cooperation for the benefit of 
consumers on both sides of the Atlantic and globally.  
The first 8 months of strengthened cooperation have been  
a clear success, with a series of insightful regulatory 
exchanges and two successful joint webinars for Chinese 
operators under the SPEAC project. In addition, the Seventh 
High-Level EU-US-China Product Safety Summit took place  
in November 2022.

The European Commission also closely cooperates with 
Health Canada, based on the EU-Canada Comprehensive 
Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). In addition to the 
regular exchange between EU Safety Gate/RAPEX and the 
Canadian RADAR database, both sides have been exchanging 
their experiences and best practice regarding online market 
surveillance and cooperating on awareness-raising activities. 
A joint social media campaign on safe online shopping by 
young people took place in August-September 2022.

On the multilateral front, the European Commission is 
actively participating in the work of the UN Working Group 
on Consumer Product Safety (under the United Nations 
Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD) and the 
OECD Working Party on Consumer Product Safety (WPCPS). 
In particular, Safety Gate is a major contributor to the OECD 
Global Recalls Portal, which brings together information 
about corrective measures on dangerous products, including 
product recalls that are issued around the world. 

The Commission is also contributing to building the product 
safety community at international level. The 8th edition 
of the International Product Safety Week took place in 
November 2022 in Brussels. The conference brought 
together a record number of over 640 product safety 
professionals from 73 countries. 

The theme of this edition was “New horizons for product 
safety”. It featured forward-thinking sessions, ranging from 
the impact of gender on product safety to the safety of new 
technologies. And there was a joint workshop organised with 
UNCTAD on the role of youth and civil society in product 
safety. The week also hosted the International Symposium 
of the International Consumer Product Health and Safety 
Organization (ICPHSO). 

19

3. THE SAFETY GATE WEBSITE 

You can connect to the Safety Gate website in any of 
the languages of the EU, as well as Icelandic, Norwegian, 
Ukrainian and Arabic. The information on the alerts is 
updated daily following information received from the 
national authorities, who are responsible for the content 
of the alerts.

On the Safety Gate website you can:

•  search for dangerous products using different criteria, 
open any of the alerts to see the details, and export the 
information as a PDF document or export your search 
results as an Excel table;

•  subscribe to be regularly informed about the latest 
alerts, with your selected criteria, in the language of 
your choice;

•  find information about General Product Safety 

Directive and the Regulation;

•  find all the information about the CASP, the Product 
Safety Pledge and international cooperation on 
product safety;

•  find details about related campaigns and events, 

including the Product Safety Award.

20

Participate and spread the word about Safety Gate  
and play a role in improving product safety in your network, 
among colleagues and friends. 

21

4. ABOUT THIS REPORT 

The data in this report relates to information received from 
national authorities on measures taken against dangerous 
non-food products. This information includes several risks 
that they have identified, mainly to consumers’ health 
and safety but also to the environment or risks related 
to professional products (i.e. not normally available to 
consumers). The report also takes into account data related 
to information exchanged among member countries that is 
not published on the Safety Gate website. 

This report presents statistics on the rapid alert system 
and in no way represents a comprehensive picture of 
all dangerous products on the single market. Neither 
does it give an overview of all market surveillance efforts 
undertaken by the EU/EEA national authorities. 

Due to the dynamic nature of the system, data may change 
depending on when it was extracted from the system.

Contacts:

Contacts in the member countries

Contacts in the member countries for businesses

Key documents and tools:

Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety (GPSD)

Guidelines for the management of the rapid alert system  
on general product safety and its notification system

Risk Assessment Guidelines

Instructions for using the Business Gateway  
for producers and distributors

Product Safety Pledge

Documents concerning the revision  
of the General Product Safety Directive

22

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ISBN 978-92-68-00279-7