The International Task Force for Sustainable Products (ITFSP) aims for more information sharing and practical co-operation in developing policies such as labels and standards. Labels and standards cannot be successful without efforts to police and enforce them. As voluntary and mandatory environmental standards are implemented there must be mechanisms to check that the requirements of the schemes are being adhered to, and also sanctions applied when they are not.
The Market Surveillance and Compliance GSPN aims to:
- Map current market surveillance and compliance activities.
- Create new communities of practice to share best practice in market surveillance and compliance activities.
- To develop new protocols to allow information sharing (for example of test results and enforcement actions).
- To identify a role for an EU network to support the Eco-Design for Energy Using Products (EuP) Directive.
Relevant documents will be made available through this website.
Progress Update December 2007
Communiqué to the EU
At a meeting held in June 2006 there was an action on meeting representatives from the UK, Denmark and Sweden to draft a communiqué to the EU regarding the establishment of an international compliance network - with special reference to the fulfilment of obligations under the Ecodesign Directive for Energy Using Products (EUP) for EU governments to communicate market surveillance and enforcement actions. This was sent in October 2006; a response is awaited.
Compliance testing map
In 2006 UK Defra MTP and ANEC (the European consumer voice in standardisation) commissioned a joint research project to review the range of activity throughout EU member states related to compliance with the EU Energy Label regulations. The report found that:
- in some EU countries up to 40% of products in stores were unlabelled or did not display the correct energy labels, but 20 to 30% was a more typical figure
- of nine countries studied, three do not undertake any compliance testing, and of those that do, only two undertake a significant amount of testing
- many appliances only meet their energy label claims because of tolerances incorporated into the test standards
The results will be used by the GSPN as a basis for the compliance testing map and for a meeting to be held in Brussels in June 2007.
Event
An international workshop is being held in conjunction with IEA in Paris on February 28/29 2008 in which the results of the EU mapping study will be discussed along with a programme exploring how best to contribute to further sharing of current compliance practices. Other issues such as test laboratories and the role of developing countries may be discussed. Other items for discussion will include encouraging and sharing best practice in sanctions. The recent example from Australia requiring payments to consumers for products that did not meet their energy efficiency claims may be of interest. A link to the registration form can be found here. Expressions of interest in contributing to the event are welcomed by the GSPN Lead, Chris Evans 
Documents
Meeting held London - June 2006
A meeting was held in June 2006 as a side event to EEDAL06 with the purpose of establishing interest in forming a network. The network's focus would be to explore the issues, which products and policy measures are affected, how governments, industry and other institutions are tackling the issues and what further national, or co-operative international actions would be helpful.
Relevant meeting documents and papers presented at the Compliance Monitoring meeting are available here: 
Any comments on the content and terminology of this web page, or how it could be improved should be sent to chris.evans@consumerexpertise.com
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