Rapid Exchange of Information on Unsafe Products

RAPEX is the European Union’s alert system for consumer products that show a safety risk. The system was introduced by the General Product Safety Directive of 2001.

RAPEX allows rapid exchange of information among member states and the Commission about unsafe products and the measures taken by the member states to deal with that safety problem.

Since 2004, RAPEX is public. As a result, the Commission publishes a weekly overview of RAPEX notifications at the following website address: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/dyna/rapex/rapex_archives_en.cfm

So far, every year a number of notifications of unsafe bicycle-related products have been issued. A search engine now allows you to get a list of all these notifications since 2005, just by typing in “bicycle”. RAPEX does not only involve the 27 EU member states but also the EFTA member states, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

In 2009 the Commission has added additional information to the system. In order to give a better view on enforcement, the RAPEX team has decided to publish also the names of the countries that have found the notified product on their market, have taken appropriate measures and have submitted a reaction to a RAPEX notification as a consequence.

Information about the reacting countries is available in the RAPEX weekly overviews in the column 'Products were found and measures were taken also in'. The Commission RAPEX team is publishing reactions sent from May 2009 onwards.