New developments in product safety and monitoring of installations

At EU level, the new Market Surveillance Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 will become directly applicable from 16 July 2021. Germany therefore needs to adapt its Product Safety Act (ProdSG), which will bring about a number of changes for manufacturers, distributors and EU importers. To this end, the German government’s first ministerial draft was recently submitted, essentially containing the following amendments:

A draft German Market Surveillance Act (MÜG) has already been tabled to implement the European Market Surveillance Regulation. In order to avoid conflicting rules between the Product Safety Act and the Market Surveillance Act, various provisions will be removed from the Product Safety Act. For example, section 6 (‘Market surveillance’) and section 7 (‘Information and reporting obligations’) of the Product Safety Act will be almost entirely transferred to the new Market Surveillance Act.

In the course of adapting the German Product Safety Act to the Market Surveillance Regulation, a new Installations Monitoring Act (ÜAnlG) will – at last – transfer the provisions on installations requiring monitoring from the Product Safety Act into a separate law. It is a welcome step that the provisions governing the operation of installations requiring monitoring (such as lifts) will be incorporated into a separate law, since these were only the remains of the historical legislation preceding the Product Safety Act. The addressee of these new provisions is not the manufacturer or the EU importer, but the operator of the installations. The safety of installations in ongoing operations is not regulated by European law, which is why such purely national provisions can exist. And this often leads to double checks by public authorities, which is confusing for foreign producers: once for the sale, and once for operation.

As the provisions on installations requiring monitoring are transferred from the Product Safety Act to the Installations Monitoring Act, the Product Safety Act will for the first time become an act dealing entirely with product safety.

In addition, according to the present draft it will now also be possible in Germany to issue bans on the placing on the market of entire product types. This has not been possible to date under German product safety law, unlike, for example, Austrian product safety law. For instance, Austria has used such legislation to take action against laser pointers which pose a risk to eyesight.