Member States ensure appropriate follow-up to ‘Article 12 notifications’, ‘Article 12 notifications requiring emergency action’, notifications under Article 22 of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 and to information on products posing a risk sent by the Commission (Chapter 3.3.4) as soon as possible and by the deadlines specified in Appendix 4 to these Guidelines at the latest.
Notifications for information as well as notifications under Article 11 of the GPSD and notifications under Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 (notification for less than serious risks) do not require any specific follow-up activities. These notifications often do not contain the data needed for effective and efficient enforcement regarding the notified product (e.g. the notified product and/or measures are not sufficiently identified) or the level of the risk is not considered to be serious.
Although there is no specific need for a follow-up in the referred cases, it is still important that Member States verify whether they disagree with the consideration of the risk as less than serious so they may eventually make a follow-up upon the information of a different risk assessment. Member States are therefore encouraged to ensure follow-up to such notifications where the notified product is likely to have been made available to consumers on their market and product identification allows measures to be taken.
On receipt of a notification, a Member State examines the information provided in the notification and takes appropriate action in order to:
establish whether the product was marketed on its territory;
assess what preventive or restrictive measures should be taken with regard to the notified product found on its market, taking into account the measures taken by the notifying Member State and any special circumstances that could justify different types of measures or no action being taken;
perform additional risk assessment and testing of the notified product, if necessary;
collect any additional information that may be relevant for other Member States (e.g. information on distribution channels of the notified product in other Member States).
To ensure efficient and effective follow-up, best practice follow-up techniques should be employed by national authorities, including:
National authorities organise regular (planned and random) checks on the market in order to establish whether consumer products notified through the RAPEX application are made available to consumers. When the Member State is mentioned as a country of destination, reinforced checks on the market shall be carried out, notably by contacting the economic operator(s) indicated in the notification.
National authorities provide, when necessary, business associations with overviews of the most recent notifications and enquire whether any of the notified products were produced or distributed by their members. National authorities provide businesses only with summaries of notifications, such as the weekly overviews published on the RAPEX website. Whole notifications should not be transmitted to third parties, as certain information (e.g. details of the risk description or information on distribution channels) is often confidential and should be protected.
National authorities regularly alert consumers and businesses about consumer products notified through the RAPEX application via their websites and/or other media, e.g. referring consumers and business to the RAPEX website. Information published in this way allows consumers to check whether they have and use products posing a risk and often provides the authority with useful feedback.
National authorities regularly perform online checks to try to identify whether products notified via RAPEX are available on online markets. Online check techniques may include web-crawling, data mining, data scraping, etc.
National authorities apply various follow-up techniques in parallel and ideally do not limit their activities to only one of them.
The Member State in which a manufacturer, a representative or an importer of the notified product is established (‘Main Member State’) ensures appropriate follow-up to notifications distributed through the RAPEX application. The ‘Main Member State’ often has better legal and technical means of obtaining information on the notified case, which will help other Member States to undertake effective follow-up activities.