With a non-compliance rate of 71% of 210 controlled products, the overall situation of compliance appears to be unsatisfactory for online trade.
The national authorities involved in this project had different focus areas for the products they included in the project. Many of the products are regarded "high-risk"-products, like cheap electronics, jewellery and soft plastic products. For other categories of products, there is less risk to find restricted substances above limit, such as in fashion articles, sports and leisure and the category others (mostly articles in soft plastic PVC material). As we see from the results in
chapter 3.1.2 , lead, cadmium, phthalates and SCCP are the substances more often found above restriction limit. This will influence the results and is important to keep in mind, when analysing the results. Generally, it is also important to highlight that our selection of products is not randomly chosen. But based on a risk approach and the results regarding non-compliance will therefore not represent a general selection of all products available on the market.
4.1 Location of traders
The results described in
chapter 3.5.1 regarding the location of the traders showed that it did not matter if they were located outside EU or not, which was a surprise compared to previous e-commerce projects. One explanation for this could be that many actors use dropshipping as their business model and, even though they are situated inside EU, the products are shipped directly from China to consumers. These dropshipping traders often have a lack of knowledge of the legislations and product safety. This is also common for many small web shops; they have the same knowledge gap regarding legislation and product safety as seen for dropshipping traders.
4.2 Product types
Non-compliance rates vary depending on product type. For biocides and plant protection products non-compliance can be controlled solely from the information found on a webpage advertising a product. Therefore, the non-compliance is always 100% for controlled products (
chapter 3.3). When investigating articles with restricted substances, chemical analyses must be done before concluding non-compliances. Electronic products (including electrical toys) have the highest non-compliance rate (78% and 87%). Followed by jewellery 50%, sports and leisure 38%, fashion 25% and other 17% (
chapter 3.1). The high non-compliance of electrical products follows the same pattern as previous enforcement projects.
4.3 Precious metals
The non-compliance rate for precious metals were 100% (
chapter 3.2). There are some indicators which can show potentially non-compliant products for example too cheap price (expensive raw material), odd looking color to the specific precious metal. An explanation for the high non-compliance rate could be that control of precious metals often require a good knowledge of the raw materials and the industry. Also, sometimes new actors on the market are not always aware of the requirements which can give high rates of non-compliance.
4.4 Type of online actor
The non-compliance rate for different actors; dropshipping, web shops and marketplaces were quite high for all three types of actors (
Figure 9). In the last Joint Nordic e-commerce project the non-compliance where lower for both marketplaces and web shops. The most likely reason is that the choice of products for control could have improved for the NEA: s and when choosing high risk products such as electrical products the non-compliance level increase as well. Another reason could be that the chosen web shops in this project were very small and seem to have less knowledge of the legislation
4.5 Labelling
In some cases the obligation for labelling products with an authorised representative for the manufacture (in many cases called EU representative) (Article 4 in Market Surveillance Regulation) were controlled. This obligation seems to have some deficiencies about labelling and correctness. Either the contact details of the EU representative were missing on the label, or the information given on the label were false according to the responding EU representative (
chapter 3.4). EU Commissions solution in DSA, of giving platforms only a reactive responsibility and not a proactive responsibility as other actors, is to give EU representatives this proactive responsibility. This is done in the Market Surveillance legislation for RoHS and Toys Directive and the intention is to add it in other chemical legislations like CLP and Reach. We think this obligation needs to be improved. One way could be that platforms should get an obligation to check the correctness of the EU representative for the offered products, and also give this information to authorities when asked for.
According to the new legislative framework, a CE-marking should guarantee compliance (manufacture responsibility) and should be accomplished with EU Declaration of conformity (DoC) and technical documentation. In the chemical area Toys- and RoHS directive is within this framework. Note that these “CE-marking directives” does not include other chemical legislations. The results show that CE marking, contact information on importer/ manufactures/EU representative and DoC were missing in many cases (see
chapter 3.4). This indicates that the system of new legislative framework – where the manufacture shall ensure that the product is compliant by adding a CE-marking, contact information and having a correct DoC – are not efficient.
4.6 Pesticides
For biocidal products and plant protection products, it was easy to find products which did not have the necessary national authorisation (
chapter 3.3). A reason for this was that the dropshipping actors were often unaware of both selling these products and that biocidal products and plant protection products normally require national authorisation. Several thought that as they sold products from other EU or EEA countries, the products would be compliant in all countries. In order for the compliance rate to increase, dropshipping actors need to increase their knowledge about the products they are selling and applicable legislations.
4.7 Chemical products
In order to control a chemical products classification and label according to the provisions in the CLP-regulation, you normally need to have information about the content of the product., e.g. in the form of a safety data sheet or information of the chemical substances in the product. A major problem in this project was the difficulty with getting in contact with the trader and receiving the necessary information from them. When contacting the traders, several never answered or just sent conformation that they have received our e-mail. In many cases, it was unclear where the trader behind the dropshipping store was located. Although the online actors were aiming for consumers on the Swedish market, it turned out that out of five traders, two were in the Netherlands and one trader was located outside of the EU.