LightingEurope 2024 Online Mystery Shopper Exercise: Shocking Results on Safety and Compliance
LightingEurope has published the third edition of its Mystery Shopper Exercise, an assessment of the compliance of selected lighting products sold in online marketplaces. This time the scope, which covered 3 lighting product families (LED Strips, G4 lamps on mains and Children’s Night lights) in 4 Online marketplaces (European and non-European) in 5 Member States, went a step further by testing against relevant safety standards. As in previous editions, the results are just as shocking and disappointing.
The 2024 results reveal that of the 275 products surveyed (the first 30/40 offered by the platforms according to the given criteria), 100% were found to be non-compliant with the information requirements for online sales.
Using a risk-based approach, 36 of the 275 products were also physically inspected for their packaging information requirements; 81%, i.e. 29 of the 36 products, were again found to be non-compliant. In addition, 20 of the 29 products, Children's Night lights and LED strips, were selected and tested against the relevant safety standards in an accredited laboratory and all were found to be unsafe.
Elena Scaroni, Secretary General of LightingEurope, said: "These findings raise serious concerns for consumer safety, the competitiveness of EU industry and the effective enforcement of EU legislation, and confirm a worrying trend already identified by LightingEurope in its previous assessments. For these reasons, we call on all relevant policy makers to put in place ambitious EU legislation to clarify the responsibility of online marketplaces for non-compliant products sold through their platforms.
”Alfredo Menghini, Policy Officer at LightingEurope, added: "The DSA and GPSR do not address the lack of responsibility and liability of online marketplaces when a non-EU manufacturer places a non-compliant product on the market through them. We have a major legal gap where there is no responsible and liable party for non-compliant products entering the EU. To solve this problem, online marketplaces should be considered as economic operators, as they benefit financially from the sale of these non-compliant products".
Contact: Elena Scaroni, Secretary General (elena.scaroni@lightingeurope.org)
About LightingEurope
LightingEurope is the voice of the lighting industry, based in Brussels and representing 32 companies and national associations. Together these members account for over 1,000 European companies, the majority of which are small or medium-sized. They represent a total European workforce of over 80,000 people and an annual turnover exceeding 15 billion euro. LightingEurope is committed to promoting efficient lighting that benefits human comfort, safety and well-being, and the environment. LightingEurope advocates a positive business and regulatory environment to foster fair competition and growth for the European lighting industry. More information is available at www.lightingeurope.org.
