EU says could ban unsafe Chinese goods

(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission said Wednesday it may ban Chinese goods deemed unsafe unless China demonstrates it is effectively dealing with dangerous products.

Brussels is not satisfied with the response Beijing made when it was alerted by the European Union about dangerous Chinese-made goods, said Commission spokeswoman for consumer issues Helen Kearns.

Amid a series of recalls of Chinese-made toys in recent months, Chinese authorities have undertaken to provide a report on their efforts to crack down on the unsafe produce to the European Commission by the end of October.

"Frankly if we don't see a very substantial improvement by the end of October ... then we will look again" at the possibility of bans, Kearns told journalists.

"Our first preferences is not bans, our first preference is to work with the Chinese," she said.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has launched a broad two-month review of its defences against unsafe imports, particularly toys, following the high-profile recalls by US toy-maker Mattel.

Most recently, Mattel announced on Tuesday yet another massive recall of toys made in China, targeting some 844,000 items with high levels of lead.

Kearns said that EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva spoke with Mattel officials Wednesday about the recall and was due to speak with the chief executive of the company either later in the day or on Thursday.

Despite the safety review, Kearns insisted that EU measures in place to detect and keep out unsafe goods were working and that "the Mattel recalls are not a wake up call ... we we're already awake."

She said that an EU-wide rapid alert system had so far this year received 1,000 notifications of dangerous goods, as many as was received for all of 2006. Of that figure, at least half were from China, she said.

Separately, EU consumer advocacy group BEUC warned that the current division of responsibilities for monitoring product safety in Europe between the Commission and national authorities led to "confusion and to bad regulation."

"The current European laws on toy safety have not been properly enforced in recent times by national authorities," BEUC said in a statement.

"There is also an urgent need to bring more coherence to the many different EU laws on the safety of consumer products generally," it added.

Socialist lawmakers at the European Parliament warned in Strasbourg that consumers in Europe were being misled by labels on toys displaying CE, which they said was giving false confidence in products' safety.

"Most people wrongly believe that the mark is a guarantee of safety backed by a rigorous inspection regime," said German EU lawmaker Evelyne Gebhardt.

"In reality, the symbol is just the manufacturer's declaration that the product is in accordance with EU law," she added.