European Commission consults on safety standards for children’s products

The European Commission opened, on 5 August 2022, a consultation on the safety requirements to be met by standards applying to several categories of children products. 

The draft Commission Decision is adopted under the framework set up in Directive 2001/95/EC, known as the General Product Safety Directive. Under the Directive, the Commission can establish safety requirements to be met by product standards, which then must be incorporated into the standards adopted by European standardization bodies. 

The Commission proposal would establish safety requirements for standards concerning: 

• Products intended to be worn by children
• Products intended to facilitate seating, sleeping, bathing, body care, relaxation, transportation, and early learning 
• Products intended to facilitate feeding, drinking, or sucking 
• Products related to children’s products (accessories to the covered categories above, or products to be mounted or installed by adults which are accessible or offer protective functions to a child)

The safety standards address a broad range of hazards, such as chemical hazards, flammability hazards or hazards associated with the project’s parts. 

Despite the broad scope of the new standards, some product categories will not be covered by them. This is especially the case of toys, which are governed by their own piece of legislation (Directive 2009/48/EC, the Toy Safety Directive). The provisions of the General Product Safety Directive only apply to products to the extent that they are not covered by product-specific legislation. 

The Commission is also working on a revision of the Toy Safety Directive, for which public consultations concluded in May 2022.

Both the proposed standards for children’s products and the revision of the Toy Safety Directive are actions taken under the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, which applies the vision of the European Green Deal to the chemicals sector. You can learn more about the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability by re-watching our recent webinar on the topic.