Conference on cross border cooperation

While product legislation becomes increasingly harmonised within the EU, its enforcement is still fragmented. The Dutch Presidency in the EU arranged the 23 February a conference on how compliance and common objectives could be achieved through cross border cooperation.

EU legislation is often complex, complicated, unclear and sometimes even contradictory. This, in combination with scarce resources for enforcement, is not the best condition to achieve a high level of compliance, participants from a great number of enforcement authorities in the EU stated.

There was consensus on the fact that legislation in many cases could be improved, but also on the necessity of cooperation, to achieve predictability and legal certainty on the internal market. Different models and principles for cooperation were discussed at the conference. Encouraging professionalism through exchange of experiences, development of best practices, peer evaluation and tools such as the OECD scoreboard were some of the proposals highlighted. How authorities prioritize inspection objects, which activities are appropriate for different types of infringements, how inspection authorities deal with e-commerce and how “box ticking” mentality can create obstacles to both compliance and inspection were other issues discussed. The importance of clear rules for cooperation, but also of the development of a cooperative culture and informal networks for cooperation, was underlined.

A separate workshop on market surveillance was held.