In some countries a great emphasis lies on the home market (e.g. France). How important is a European umbrella association for markets with little export?

As everyone might know a lot of legislation comes from Brussels. So each EU country, whether it exports or not, has to deal with product compliance. Compliance legislation is becoming more and more complex as it covers more and more aspects, ranging in the meantime from electrical safety, electro-magnetic compatibility, requirements related to protecting the environment through to requirements protecting the well-being of you and me. The responsibility for compliance lies with the importer and/or brand owner. Under the new legislative framework (which came into force on 1/1/2010) a brand owner is seen as the manufacturer! As an industry we should not only be aware of this change in thinking on compliance, but should also strengthen our power EU-wide and share our knowledge and interests.


The next survey executed by IfH Cologne will start within the next two weeks. Will it be altered in any way and will it include different questions and topics?

The upcoming survey will be more of a ?business barometer? and will not review the differences between all product categories.


At the moment 12 national associations are members of EPPA, but only five national associations participated in the survey. It would be useful to have more participants in order to gain more data.

At the moment the participation of the country members could be better. So we are trying to convince our other members to join in. The more reliable the information and market transparency are, the better our message towards the stakeholders will be. Our target for this year is to involve at least three more countries in the quarterly survey.