On Tuesday, the Inside Market and Shopper Safety Committee authorised its place on an replace of EU rules on toy security unanimously, with 37 votes in favour. The textual content, which additionally converts the present directive right into a regulation, responds to plenty of rising challenges, together with the modifications in buying habits from on-line outlets and the elevated use of digital applied sciences.
Ban on dangerous chemical substances
To enhance baby well being safety, the regulation continues to prohibit carcinogenic and mutagenic substances or substances poisonous for copy (CRM). The adopted textual content moreover bans chemical substances dangerous to the endocrine or the respiratory system, and poisonous to particular organs.
Strengthening checks
The draft rules present for producers to create digital product passports for every toy, which element the way it complies with the related rules. It will improve market surveillance and strengthen customs inspections at borders. MEPs added that buyers must also have easy accessibility to security info, for instance through a QR code. Additionally they urge the Fee to assist and information SME toy producers in performing security assessments and fulfilling the product passport necessities.
Security, safety and privateness by design
To stop overlaps with present EU rules, MEPs specify that digital toys with AI may have to adjust to the Artificial Intelligence Act, which classifies them as high-risk, and topics them to third-party assessments, danger administration, transparency, and human oversight.
Beneath EU Cybersecurity rules, web related toys which have social interactive options (e.g. talking or filming) might also require a third-party conformity evaluation. The security evaluation may have to think about well being dangers, and when acceptable psychological well being, to ensure the very best requirements for youngsters’s well-being.
Toys should additionally adjust to the not too long ago up to date General Product Safety rules, for instance, when it comes to on-line gross sales, accident reporting, customers’ proper to info and treatment.
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Rapporteur Marion Walsmann (EPP, Germany) stated: “The well being of our kids is paramount. There isn’t a place in a toddler’s room for unsafe toys. The up to date textual content protects kids extra successfully from dangerous chemical substances in toys, reduces administrative burdens and bolsters the detection of unsafe toys, particularly from outdoors the EU. This ensures truthful competitors for EU toy producers, most of whom are SMEs, and offers them with further assist”.
Subsequent steps
The draft report will now be put to a vote at an upcoming plenary session and can represent Parliament’s place at first studying. The file might be adopted up by the brand new Parliament after the European elections on 6-9 June.
Background
Regardless of the EU market being among the many most secure on this planet, harmful toys nonetheless discover their method into customers’ fingers. In accordance to the EU Safety Gate (the EU speedy alert system for harmful client merchandise), toys have been essentially the most notified product class, accounting for 23% of all notifications in 2022 and 20% in 2021.
