Goods and standards

For goods to freely circulate in the Single Market, they need a well-functioning system of rules between products that fall under EU legislation (so-called harmonised legislation) and those products that do not fall under EU legislation (non-harmonised legislation).

Otherwise, businesses face additional costs or stop offering their products up on the market all together. Even a delay in entering the market for mutual recognition of a product can lead to costs of between EUR 10,000 and 500,000 per product, per market. We also see more clear-cut situations where companies, particularly SMEs, are faced with market access denial decisions.

BusinessEurope follows initiatives related to harmonised and non-harmonised products. This mainly entails work around the New Legislative Framework and on files or areas such as the General Product Safety Regulation, Product Liability, Standardisation, Market Surveillance, Mutual Recognition, and Conformity Assessments.