3. Results

In this chapter, the results from control of the products are given. The non-compliance rate between different parameters is investigated.

In this project a total of 210 products were controlled for regulated substances and labelling. The products were purchased from 88 different actors, distributed between marketplaces (10), dropshipping traders (46) and web shops (32). The overall results when it comes to compliance for all products reveals that 71% of the products inspected were found to be non-compliant, as shown in figure 4.

Figure 4. Overview of compliance and non-compliance for all the products controlled in this project (both restrictions and labelling)

Figure 5 shows a summary of all controlled product types. Overall, most controlled products where electrical products (50), jewellery (51) and biocides 34). In the next subchapters more details of the different product types and legislation compared to compliance is described.

Figure 5. Number of controlled product types.

Restrictions laid down in Reach, POP and RoHS legislations is compared with non-compliance and product types

In this project several legislations about restrictions were controlled for different product types (fig 6). Restrictions were controlled for articles where the most non-compliant product type was electrical toys with a non-compliance of 81% (13 out of 15). The second most non-compliant product type was electrical products with 74% (28 out of 36) non-compliance, followed by jewellery 50% (24 out of 48) , toys 50% (2 out of 4), sports and leisure 38% (3 out of 8), fashion 25% (4 out of 16) and other 17% (1 out of 6).

Also note that electronic products and toys have labelling regulations – see chapter 3.4.

Figure 6. Non-compliance rate of restrictions per product type (articles).

Table 2 shows a more detailed list of examples of tested products.

Table 2. Examples of products that were tested:

In this project several legislations on restrictions were controlled (fig 7). Most non-compliances were in the scope of RoHS restrictions with 41 out of 64 products (64%), followed by Reach 34 out of 87 products (40%) and POP regulation 12 out of 42 products (29%).

Figure 7. Percent of non-compliance per legislation

In many cases, a product could be tested for several different substances, but also have several different materials or parts tested. In total 133 articles were controlled for restrictions. For example, for an electrical product, both the soft plastic parts and, the metal soldering point inside the product were tested. The restricted substances were predominantly found in metals and soft plastic. Lead, cadmium, phthalate (DEHP) and short chained chlorinated paraffins (SCCP) were the restricted substances most often found. The following substances were found above restriction limit in the project:

The results of precious metals showed 100% non-compliances for eight jewellery. Non-compliances were found by doing XRF analyses of the content of metals and by checking markings/stamps.

For biocidal products it is possible to identify that a product lacks the necessary national authorisation directly from information on the website. As the control could be conducted simultaneously with the selection process, only non-compliant products were selected for inspection and therefore the non-compliance rate was 100%. All controlled actors used drop shipping for the controlled products. Several of the actors claimed they were not aware of that they were selling biocidal products and plant protection products. Their explanation was that they had downloaded an entire product category from a drop shipping supplier, for example Gardening products or Household products. The actors that have responded removed the non-compliant products. Some cases are still ongoing.

34 biocidal products and 4 plant protection products from 12 different actors were controlled. The most common type of biocidal product we found was insecticides. See Table 3 for the complete distribution. Most of the controlled products seemed to be authorised in other EU or EEA member states, but this was not explicitly controlled.

Table 3. Controlled product types for biocidal products

Figure 8 includes labelling deficiencies. The CE-marking directives Toys- and RoHS directive has a non-compliance rate between 66–88%. Examples of non-compliances are missing CE-marking, ID number for the product and contact details for manufacture, importer/ EU representative. A dropshipping trader will be an importer if the product was sent directly from a non-EU company to the consumer. The dropshipping traders fully contact details then must be on the label, but it is often physically troublesome because the dropshipping trader will never possess or see the product.

None of the controlled chemical products were labelled according to article 17 in the CLP-regulation.  But there is an uncertainty if all the controlled products actually were classified as hazardous and therefore should be labelled because the dropshipping trader did not send the necessary information. Four of the eight controlled products were of product types which normally are classified as hazardous (drain cleaner, oven cleaner, rust remover and stain remover) and were considered as non-compliant due to the lack of hazard information on the label. Three of the eight controlled products were of product types where we can’t say that the products probably should be classified. 

Figure 8. Non-compliance rate for the different product types (n= number of products controlled per product type).

In a comparison between different actors (Figure 9), dropshipping trader had the highest proportion of articles with restricted substances above the limit values in the legislation, 81%. This is followed by non-compliance rate for marketplaces with 72% and web shops with 59%.

Figure 9. Percent of non-compliance per company type (n= number of products controlled).

For 39 products (electrical products and toys) controls were done if an EU representative (authorised representative) existed for the product, when information of an importer was missing. In 21 cases (54%) there were no information on the products label regarding an EU representative, and respectively 18 cases where it existed (46%). In eight of these cases the authority asked the EU representative if this was correct and in three cases (38%) the EU representative replied that this information was not correct.

Contact details of d the trader is obligatory according to DSA. Consumer legislation regulates that the traders contact details must be given to the consumer.  For 7 out of 44 dropshipping traders and 6 out of 64 traders on marketplaces contact details were not found. Only in one case out of 33 this was missing in web shops.

Depending on the trader’s location the non-compliance varied with lower amount of non-compliance for traders within EU (45%), compared to non -EU 69% -(figure 10. A few products also had unknown origin of the trader’s web shop. Note that biocidal products and plant protection products were excluded from figure 7 to avoid distorting the results. The reasons for excluding them where firstly that these products all appeared to have their origin within the EU, and secondly that non-compliance was detected simultaneous to the selection of online offers for inspection.  

Figure 10. Non-compliance rate for different regions (pesticides excluded)

A majority of the products were produced in China (155). In many cases (67) the production country was unknown, but it is a possibility that these products also were produced in China.

This subchapter describes the measures taken by the actors after the authorities first contact about the non-compliant products. 17 actors did not answer at all. Eight actors did not remove the offer and in for four actors the offer reappeared after the first removal. Dropshipping traders had the highest amount of these results followed by web shop and then one marketplace. After this report there could be an improved situation, since authorities still has ongoing inspections.

The national authorities notified the actors about the non-compliance in writing. Most of the actors voluntarily withdraw the product from the market. Follow up actions varies within the countries and depending on the nationality of the trader. Measures could be reporting cases to police/prosecutor, sanctions fees, handing over cases to other member states, and notifying non-compliant cases in Safety gate.