The SEE QI 4 project team had agreed to focus on the product of electric drills during its further cooperation on market surveillance in the area of machinery. The Slovenian technical expert Janez Furlan, who is well known to some of the participants due to his engagement in the Kosovo Worldbank funded QI project, prepared a checklist and presented it in a two-day training to market inspectors from all Western Balkan countries. After a short recap of the Directive 2006/42/EC on machinery, the trainer presented the standards EN 62841-2-1:2018 and EN 62841-1:2015 and their very practical translation into a checklist to be used for market inspections. Pre-shot videos and online tutorials demonstrated how to properly implement hands-on tests to verify the requirements of the standards. The participants discussed how to do the risk assessment based on these test results, using again the Risk Assessment for Safety Gate/RAPEX form available on the European Commission website Risk Assessment Guidelines (RAG) and which measures to take as a consequence.
The approx. 100 participants gave the feedback, that the training fully met their needs and expectations. So virtual collaboration events proved again to be working very well in this SEE QI 4 project.
The workshop’s aim was a mainly technical one, to get to a harmonized approach in market surveillance of machinery products, but the discussion of the common checklist also triggered non-technical discussions about the role of market inspectors. Are market inspectors trained and equipped to perform hands-on technical tests of sampled products or are their tasks limited to administrative and visual checks only? Is it necessary to contract laboratories for the full scope of tests to be performed for all products or should scarce resources be saved by forwarding only those products that raised suspicion in self-performed tests? Some of the participating countries confirmed that they will pilot the full appliance of the electric drills market surveillance checklist in the upcoming months – we are curious about the results.
