Division 3.3 Criteria for non-notification

The flow of information must be manageable for both sides: the economic operators and the authorities. The notification procedure should deal only with justified cases taking into account the criteria mentioned above and avoid overloading the system with non-relevant notifications.

In order to assess if a notification by producers or distributors to the competent authorities is justified, it is also relevant to know on what terms a notification is not required.

The objective is to prevent a possible proliferation of notifications of measures, actions or decisions related to ‘isolated circumstances or products’ which do not require any verification, monitoring or action by the authorities and do not provide information useful for risk assessment and consumer protection. This may happen when it is clear that the risk is related to a limited number of well-identified products (or batches) only, and the producer or distributor has solid evidence to conclude that the risk has been fully controlled and its cause is such that knowledge of the incident does not represent useful information for the authorities (such as the malfunctioning of a production line, errors in handling or packaging, etc.).

Producers and distributors do not need to notify under the GPSD:

• products that are not within the scope of Articles 1 and 2(a) GPSD such as: antiques, products not intended for use by consumers and not likely to be used by consumers, second-hand products supplied for repair;

• products that are not within the scope of Article 5(3) GPSD such as: those covered by specific notification procedures of other Community legislation;

• products for which the manufacturer has been able to take immediate corrective action for all the items concerned. The defect is limited to well identified items or batches of items and the producer has withdrawn the items in question;

• problems related to the functional quality of the product, not to its safety;

• problems related to non-compliance with applicable rules not affecting safety in such a way that the product could be considered ‘dangerous’;

• when the producer/distributor knows that the authorities have already been informed and have all the required elements of information. In particular, if retailers receive information on a dangerous product from their producer/distributor or from a professional organisation that diffuses the information provided by a producer/distributor, they should not inform the authorities if they know that the authorities have already been informed by the producer or distributor.