Press Releases
Today the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (HLEG) will publish its “Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI”. AccessNow, ANEC and BEUC, all members of the expert group, support these guidelines but stress that they can only be a first step. The European Union has the responsibility to ensure that fundamental and consumer rights are respected and bring benefits to people.
In 2018, more than 2,200 notifications of non-food products were made to the EU’s rapid alert system (Safety Gate, formerly known as RAPEX) as failing safety requirements. Toys, motor vehicles and clothing were the product groups with the most notifications. The figure is only the tip of the iceberg as each notification may represent thousands of faulty products, and many products are possibly not found at all.
The better weather that accompanies the start of spring often sees children admitted to hospital with injuries resulting from use of garden trampolines. The latest version of the CEN standard, EN 71-14 ‘Safety of Toys - Trampolines for domestic use’ now also specifies safety requirements for "inground" trampolines, i.e. trampolines installed at ground level. ANEC and experts from the DIN Consumer Council played a leading role in the revision of the European standard.
The European Commission has just agreed on the revamp of the energy label for lighting, fridges, TV screens, dishwashers and washing machines. BEUC and its sister organisation ANEC - the consumer voice in standardisation - have long called for such an update, which will enable consumers to better understand how much energy their appliances consume.
ANEC welcomes publication by ISO of the standard, ISO 21041 ‘Guidance on unit pricing’. We participated in the development of the standard which is intended to help consumers compare the prices between products and make more informed choices.
