Ref. Ares(2024)6672967 - 20/09/2024
Pledge should not be mixed with legislative requirements. On the new blocks, they welcomed
group of stakeholders.
Bol.com stressed that consumer safety is one of their priority. They appreciated their
participation in the Pledge and shared the ambition to take it further, but more focused on new
angles linked to product safety. They would not be open straight away to extending the scope to
new areas, as it would require a lot of efforts from them as a smal platform.
Cdiscount also underlined its commitments towards product safety. However, they stressed that
the currently changing legislative framework makes it difficult for them to commit to any further
work on new commitments for now. They were however open to discuss new Pledges in the
longer term, as long as these would be consistent and not put a disproportionate burden on the
signatories.
Ebay underlined their commitment to continue working with COM on the Product Safety Pledge,
and they were also actively encouraging other jurisdictions to fol ow the example. They
mentioned Australia for example that adopted a similar pledge inspired by the EU Product
Safety Pledge. They welcomed the initiative to extend the Pledge further, mostly by widening
the membership of signatories to other stakeholders who could then become partners. They
also highlighted the changing legislative framework, and asked to avoid overlaps. They also
advocated for KPIs that do not put extreme restraints on signatories, and cal ed for a longer
timeline for the discussions.
Emag appreciated the experience with the current Pledge. They were stil discussing internal y
their feedback on the extended Pledge, and stressed that the current pace of discussion is too
fast and that the timing is not ideal given the changing legislative requirements.
Joom also appreciated the experience with the Pledge. They were supportive on the idea to
and to keep the balance between the Commission and pledging partners.
Rakuten reported that they were already working with a number of authorities and with COM to
ensure that they have safe products on their marketplace. They are a fond supporter of the
Pledge and welcomed its potential extension to new stakeholder groups, by using a model
similar to the MoU on counterfeits. They also advocated for more time for the discussions and
more careful y selected KPIs. They also wanted to see first a stable legislative environment, as
the DSA and GPSR could change key principles of the current framework.
Commissioner Reynders thanked participants for their remarks and their readiness to continue the
discussions. He stressed that voluntary initiatives would always need to go further than the legislative
requirements. He appreciated the paral el evolution of the Pledge and the legislative framework. He
nevertheless saw a strong potential in building already on the experiences with the Product Safety
Pledge. As a first step he suggested to consider inviting new stakeholders into the cooperation, and to
see how we could provide better information on product safety to consumers. He nevertheless also
underlined that we could also focus on the new building blocks and gave examples that could be
achieved easier: for example, on enforcement he mentioned the cooperation on COVID-related scams.
Commissioner Reynders also mentioned the afternoon brainstorming on the future of the Pledge during
the Annual Digital Event. During the Consumer Summit he would like to inform the public on the results
of our work, take stock on the implementation of the current Pledge (successes and chal enges) and to
look at its future. He understands that the priority could be to look at the product safety related
commitments first, if it were not possible to progress on al the building blocks. He nevertheless invited
