Effective market surveillance ensures not only protection of the interests of consumers, by ensuring that only safe products are placed on the market, but also the interests of economic operators from unfair competition.
Market surveillance implies the overall system of measures, procedure and actions that competent authorities take in order to ensure that all the products on the market fulfill prescribed safety requirements, and they include surveillance and taking corrective measures to bring the product into compliance with the prescribed requirements.
Market surveillance is the responsibility of public administration authorities. This is, in particular, to guarantee the impartiality of market surveillance operations. Market surveillance authorities should have the necessary resources and powers to conduct their surveillance activities, i.e. to monitor products placed on the market and, in case of non-compliance, to take appropriate action to enforce conformity, respecting the principle of proportionality with the degree of risk or non-compliance. The authorities should also be independent, and carry out their operations in an impartial and non-discriminatory way.