The aim is to reduce the risk for consumers. Therefore, we need to have access to comprehensive and solid information on accidents and injuries that are related to consumer products and services.

Consumer policy in the area of safety of goods and services needs the backing of the relevant information and data. Systematic data collection is part of the Consumer Policy Strategy.

Data collection initiatives

2006

• Improving the product and service safety dimension in the European Injury Database (IDB) - report provided by the Consumer Safety Institute (Netherlands) - December 2006
  
  The current available data on the safety of consumer products and services is rather limited and inadequate for policy purposes. In particular, comprehensive and up-to date information is lacking on accidents caused by non-food consumer products and on accidents occuring during the provision of services.
  One of the ways to improve this situation is to better exploit and integrate the product and service dimension into the current European Injury Data Base (IDB).
  To this end, DG SANCO financed the attached report, which does not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of DG Sanco.
  
  The key objectives of the study were to:
  • develop a methodology to select the most dangerous products and the most unsafe service related activities by means of IDB data;
  • conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a number of relatively dangerous consumer products and relatively unsafe services based on available IDB data;
  • define precisely the contents of additional data elements/codes/questions for the IDB coding manual or additional data collection procedures;
  • review and compare the different options for collecting additional product and service safety information via the IDB in the future (including the costs involved).
  
  
  
• On 20 and 21 February 2006, the European Commission organised a technical international workshop focusing on data collection on accidents and injuries related to consumer products and services. The main objective of the workshop was to get together with all major stakeholders to explore what data sources are currently available for accidents and injuries in relation to product and service safety.

2005

• The Commission has followed up with specific initiatives, such as the study Methodology for systematic collection of statistics in relation to safety of services, which was published in March 2005.