Enhancing Market Surveillance

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Enhancing Market Surveillance through Best
Practice Work Package 2 Rapid Advice Forum
Jan Deconinck PROSAFE Chairman
Torben Rahbek Independent consultant
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• EMARS Enhancing Market Surveillance through
  Best Practice
• Joint Action granted by the Commission
• 2006 2008 budget 1.5 million
• Six Work Packages
• WP 1 Cross-sharing of information
• WP 2 Advice on market surveillance issues
• - Rapid Advice Forum
• WP 3 Inspection programmes and techniques
• WP 4 Risk assessment
• WP 5 Coordination and Secretariat
• WP 6 Dissemination

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Rapid Advice Forum
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• Rapid Advice Forum
• Informal
• Rapid
• Advice
• Individual experts

• Procedures
• Experiences

• Risk assessments
• Directives, legislation

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• Rapid Advice Forum
• Presumptions
• Answer given by individual market surveillance
  officers.
• Based on their personal experience and expertise.
• Not the opinion of a Member State.
• Never regarded as a binding opinion of a Member
  State.
• Recipient is in no way obliged to follow the
  answer.
• Aim
• Means for exchange of practical experience of MS
  officers.
• Uniform conclusions in uniform cases.

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• Rapid Advice Forum
• Formal procedure
• Any market surveillance officer can ask
• The request must be sent to the secretariat
• raf_at_emars.eu
• Go to www.emars.eu to find the forms.

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• Formal procedure - include
• Nature of request
• Description of product
• Picture of product
• Technical documentation
• Indication of directives
• Indication of standards
• Indication of urgency

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• Formal procedure
• Working language English
• (Provide a summary of non-English documents, e.g.
  user instructions, test reports, etc.)
• (Or ask the secretariat to translate.)
• Urgency
• normal 10 working days
• urgent 5 working days
• very urgent 48 hours

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• Formal procedure - procedure
• The request is checked for completeness and
  relevance.
• The secretariat forwards the case to a list of
  experts.
• The expert is expected to give his personal
  opinion.
• All advices are sent back to the requester.
• The Secretariat might collate a conclusion based
  on the responses.
• This conclusion is sent to the requester and the
  experts.
• Published on the internal part of the
  Emars-website.
• Advice available to the general public ?

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• Rapid Advice Forum
• Informal procedure
• Applied to specific products or joint actions
• Specific mailing lists
• The request must be copied to
• raf_at_emars.eu
• Sharing of knowledge and experience

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Informal procedure
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Rapid Advice Forum EXAMPLES
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Rapid Advice Forum NO Fire Ball
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Rapid Advice Forum PL Blow Gun
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• Informal Procedure
• Lighters project
• Lighter shaped as beer can
• Novelty lighter torch
• Lighter with a beer opener
• Marking of lighters (logo/name ?)
• Lighter with a compass
• Lighters with lamps (leds ?)
• Lighter in the shape of a chainsaw
• Question on test report showing child resistance
• Lighters shaped as poker tokens
• Historical weapons
• Other
• Mini motor bikes

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• Future perspectives
• Webex
• WP1 Data base
• Frequently Asked Questions

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EMARS www.emars.eu (newsletter) Jozef II-straat
12-16 1000 Brussels 32 2 286 17 41 info_at_emars.eu