The Official Journal of the European Union publishes the new EU regulation on market surveillance and the compliance of products within the European Union.

The key provisions are as follows:

• Establishes a new Union Product Compliance Network (Article 29) (referred to as the “Network”) that will coordinate Member States enforcement authorities and market surveillance authorities – Article 29
• Gives the Commission the ability to designate Union Testing Facilities of its own or in a Member State - for testing of products – (48) and Article 21
• Requires Member States to establish a single market surveillance liaison office – Article 10 (3)
• Requires Member States to ensure that their market surveillance authorities have the right resources and powers
• Allows Member States to give their market surveillance authorities power to require access to embedded software, reverse engineer products (and other powers) – Article 14 (4a and 4j)
• Brings the “fulfillment service providers” into the list of economic operators – Article 3 (11)
• For some products, requires that there be an economic operator established in the EU – this can be the manufacturer, the importer, an authorized rep, or the fulfilment service provider – See Article 4
• In such cases, specific information must to be included on or with the product, including the contact details of the economic operator – Article 4 (4)
• This does apply for products covered under the RED and EMCD – Article 4 (5)
• Requires that “information society service providers” cooperate with market surveillance authorities for products being sold on-line - Article 7 (2)
• Requires that the MS authorities take account of test reports or certificates issued by CABS accredited in accordance with 765/2008 as part of “checks”: - Article 11 (5)
• Requires that Member States give economic operators at least 10 working days to be heard before a measure is taken if possible – Article 18 (3)
• Gives Commission ability to approve of specific pre-export control systems established by third countries if there is “official” verification done by the third country – Article 35 (3) and (7)

This regulation enters into force on July 16, 2019 (20 days after publication in the OJEU).

These new regulations will impact most manufacturers/economic operators placing products on the market in the EU.

The full regulation can be found here.