Market surveillance

In Germany, numerous products fall under the European General Product Safety Directive (GPSR), other European internal market legislation, and national laws. With goods worth more than 3,000 billion euros being exported and imported each year, it is the largest individual market in Europe overall. Only effective market surveillance enables the authorities to ensure product users are protected against safety and health risks. At the same time, the Europe-wide coordination of market surveillance strengthens fair competition on the EU’s internal market, thus enhancing the competitiveness of all trustworthy businesses.

As the National Contact Point for the European Safety Gate rapid alert system (formerly RAPEX), BAuA collaborates closely with the market surveillance authorities. It provides advice on reporting systems and product safety, examines reports about hazardous non-food products, and helps to raise awareness of the risks products can pose with its recall portal www.rueckrufe.de. Details of the recall portal and the challenges created by online trading are discussed in baua: Aktuell 4/2024 (p. 3).

Supporting the federal states and federal authorities

Under the Market Surveillance Act (Marktüberwachungsgesetz, MüG) and the Product Safety Act (Produktsicherheitsgesetz, ProdSG), BAuA is tasked, among other things, with supporting the authorities of the federal states and the German Federation responsible for market surveillance in the performance of their duties. This involves scientifically evaluating material defects in products and work equipment, and regularly reporting on the latest findings in the field. Furthermore, BAuA contributes actively to legislative and standardisation processes as a way of further enhancing product safety. Market surveillance actors, manufacturers, agents, importers, traders, safety specialists, commercial buyers, and non-commercial purchasers (consumers) will find important information about the safety of products sold and bought in Germany on our websites.

Practically relevant research on product safety

BAuA’s specialist units do research into the most various facets of product safety. In this respect, they focus both on individual product groups such as machines or personal protective equipment, and on risk assessment methodologies. For this purpose, they are able to avail themselves of the extensive laboratory facilities at BAuA’s Dortmund technical centre, which are used for work on product safety, as well as many other issues. For example, BAuA scientists are able to measure noise emissions or optical radiation, or gather anthropometric data that will allow work equipment to be adapted better to real body dimensions in future.

Dangerous product alerts

BAuA publishes product recalls, product alerts, prohibition orders, and other information about individual dangerous products in its Dangerous Products in Germany database. The information held in the database comes from the EU’s Safety Gate rapid alert system, to which BAuA also contributes. Safety Gate makes it possible for information gathered by the Member States about dangerous or potentially dangerous products to be exchanged at the European level.

BAuA has announced more than 3,200 unsafe product recalls since 2015. Over 3,800 European rapid alert system reports of relevance for Germany and about 80 official prohibition orders have been published too.

Statistics on product safety and common defects

BAuA evaluates information about defective products from a huge variety of sources every day. It reports regularly on its findings about product safety and places its statistical analyses at the disposal of Germany’s market surveillance authorities to help them optimise their surveillance strategies.