Policy Focus

Socialists claim Christmas victory for toy safety

The Socialist group in the European parliament has claimed a victory for toy safety in the weeks before the Christmas holidays.

MEPs adopted a vote on Thursday which will ensure greater scrutiny of children's toys, including stricter labelling and a ban on carcinogenic substances.

"This is a victory for the precautionary principle that products must be proved safe rather than assumed to be safe. We cannot take the risk that our childrens' toys have hidden dangers, and discover problems when it's too late," Swedish social democrat Anna Hedh, socialist spokeswoman on toy safety, said in a statement.

The vote was adopted by 481 members in favour, with 73 against.

UK Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy said that it was time for an update to the EU directive on toy safety. "Our current toy safety law is 20 years old and does not deal with the new risks and threats. In particular, it doesn't tackle the risks with imported toys given that 80 per cent of toys EU-wide are imported from overseas countries like China," she said.

"With this new law we have made importers responsible for ensuring toys they bring into the EU comply with our high standards."

The PES group was adamant that they were the ones reponsible for ensuring that the legislation on toy safety was comprehensive. Other political groups in parliament, they said, had been influenced by the toy industry.

"We have come under intense lobbying. We fought for greater safety but other political groups were strongly influenced by international companies," said Evelyne Gebhardt, Socialist spokeswoman on consumer protection.

"In fact, we wanted to go further and have the toys tested by independent bodies, but we could not get the others to agree on this," she added.