1. Background

The Nordic enforcement projects are run by the Nordic Enforcement Group, a subgroup of the Nordic Chemicals Group, under the Nordic Council of Ministers. The main purpose of the Nordic Enforcement Group is to exchange experience on control and enforcement of the European chemical legislations and to prepare and carry out common enforcement projects.

This project was started in January 2024 and was finalized in December 2024. The main responsibility for the project was allocated to the Swedish Chemicals Agency and the project leader was Karin Rumar. Participants in the project group were Daniel Ahlström, Jennifer Astorsdotter, Oskar Rosencrantz, Johanna Stigwall, Kristina Karlsson and Karina Zaluska from the Swedish Chemicals Agency (KEMI); Sanna Vartiainen, Anna Vuori from the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes); Kenneth Ebert and Sarah Damsbo Jørgensen from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency; Ingvild Kvien and Loella Bakka from the Norwegian Environment Agency.

The e-commerce is continuously growing. According to a report by the trade association E-commerce Europe, it is expected that online sales will account for an average of 30% of the European retail turnover by 2030 (E-commerce Europe, 2022). In the Nordic countries, 87%

Calculated from graphics regarding Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway in the EUROPEAN E-COMMERCE REPORT 2022

of the internet users bought goods or services online in 2022, which is the highest share in Europe.

The enforcement authorities must keep the pace up with this development and continue to include control and monitoring of e-commerce as part of their enforcement activity. New IT-tools and programmes are developed, which can facilitate the monitoring and enforcement activities of surveillance authorities. One of the major challenges for the enforcement authorities is that companies can trade in a country without being within the jurisdiction of the national enforcement authorities. The companies can be located outside the EU/EEA or in another EU/EEA-countries. The latest requires a close cooperation between the national authorities.

In 2020 and 2023 the Nordic enforcement group published reports on control of internet trade.

Nordic project on enforcement of internet trade and  Joint Nordic Control of E-commerce

The work from 2020 and 2023 is continued in the current enforcement project. Since then, the number of e-commerce actors are continuously growing and new ways to organise the trade has grown in importance (platforms, dropshipping etc.). Dropshipping is a rapidly increasing business model and is presented as a low-risk and easy way to start a business.

https://www.shopify.com

This model, which was not part of the previous Nordic joint enforcement project, had a special attention in this project and in this report.

New EU legislations like the Digital Service Act ((EU) 2022/2065), and the Market Surveillance Regulation (EU 2019/1020) give new provisions for the e-commerce actors and is investigated in this project.

The goal of this project was to do a check of the compliance level of e-commerce with special focus on dropshipping, explore and collect best practices of each country to enhance our work regarding enforcement of e-commerce of consumer goods and get a closer cooperation between the Nordic market surveillance authorities. We gathered experience on enforcement of different types of actors, explored the new legal framework as well as shared enforcement experiences, including the use of different IT-tools and enforcement strategies.