The Commission representative highlighted that it is an external study including a public consultation in which 27 % of the respondents were enterprises. The main issues of the proposal is the alignment to the New Legislative Framework, a change to the product coverage with the inclusion of oven gloves and dishwashing gloves, a reclassification of certain products, a change of three basic health and safety requirements and, finally, the change of the current directive into a regulation. The inclusion of oven gloves and dishwashing gloves was done because these products have become mass market products since the adoption of the current directive in 1989. The manufacturers of these products (the market for these products is 1.5 bill euro and the EU production is 100 mill euro) usually produce the same oven gloves and dishwashing gloves for professional and industrial use and having the same rules for both products would make production, import and market surveillance easier. Furthermore, the consumer should be able to expect a high level of safety from oven gloves that indicate to offer such protection. The Commission representative clarified that there are 4000 producers of personal protective equipment in Europe, but only a fraction of these produce oven gloves or dishwashing gloves. It was also indicated, that there is a challenge with available data on the subject. The statistics do not specify which injuries are related to gloves that offer inadequate protection.
Source : © European Union, 2014 - EP