Online trade and regulatory fragmentation challenge chemicals enforcement

A recent research report highlights the need to develop analytical testing methods, improve enforcement tools, promote cooperation between authorities and address the challenges of enforcing online trade and imports.

The European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) research project has produced the ‘Report on current screening and enforcement structures’, which describes how the market surveillance of chemicals is currently carried out in the EU and the challenges it faces. The report makes suggestions to improve the enforcement of chemicals. Information has been collected for the report, for example through surveys and interviews with the enforcement authorities of Member States. Tukes was involved in the preparation of the report. It was published on 10th of March 2025.

Summary of the report's conclusions and recommendations

The report identified the following challenges in the market surveillance of chemicals: 

• Lack of harmonised analytical methods to identify chemicals in products: This makes it difficult to ensure uniform conformity checks on products. 
• The enforcement of online trade and imported products: online traders may be located outside the EU and are therefore outside the jurisdiction of national authorities. In addition, complex cross-border supply chains for products make it difficult to ensure compliance.
• Limited national resources: authorities do not have sufficient financial or human resources to carry out chemical analysis or inspections. 
• The complexity of chemicals legislation: The fragmented obligations of EU legislation can be difficult to understand and enforce for both businesses and authorities. 
• In addition, the lack of effective sanctions can undermine the effectiveness of enforcement. 

The report makes recommendations such as: 

• The development of analytical testing methods: harmonised and standardised methods for an increasing number of substances and groups of substances, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). 
• Developing digital tools: for example, customised online search engines (web crawlers) to find products in online stores, AI-based systems to automate enforcement functions, chemical databases and digital product passports that can provide information on the chemical content of products. 
• Increased cooperation between authorities: in particular to improve the enforcement of online trade and share best practices. It is also important to raise awareness among online traders of their obligations under chemicals legislation, as well as the requirements of the new EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR).
• Strengthening financial and human resources: this would allow authorities to carry out a sufficient number of inspections and chemical analyses and to recruit and train competent staff.

Research report: Report on current screening and enforcement structures (pdf)

Find out more about the PARC project: PARC consortium website

For further information, please contact Senior Officer Petteri Talasniemi, tel. +358 295 052 104, [email protected]