Today, the European Commission is presenting its annual report on Safety Gate , the European Rapid Alert System for dangerous non-food products. The Report provides an overview of dangerous products notified via the Safety Gate system in 2025 and the subsequent measures taken by national authorities to protect consumers.
In 2025, 4,671 alerts were notified in the Safety Gate system, the highest recorded number since the system was launched in 2003. This is a 13% increase compared to 2024, and more than double the number of alerts reported in 2022. National authorities also issued a record number of follow-up actions, with 5,794 follow-up actions notified, which is a 35% increase compared to the previous year. This reflects the growing effectiveness of the system, reinforced under the General Product Safety Regulation: it allows for an increasingly systematic sharing of information between market surveillance authorities across the EU and the European Economic Area.
Main findings
The most frequently reported dangerous products in 2025 were cosmetics (36%), toys (16%) and electrical appliances and equipment (11%).
Risks to health stemming from products containing dangerous chemicals remained the leading cause of alerts, accounting for more than half of all notifications (53%), followed by the risk of injuries (14%) and choking (9%). Almost eight in 10 alerts concerning cosmetics related to the presence of BMCHA, a banned synthetic fragrance which can have harmful effects on the reproductive system and cause skin irritation. National authorities also, for the first time, notified cases of nail polish containing TPO, a chemical banned in 2025 that can also pose risks to prenatal health and provoke allergic reactions.
In addition to providing input for Safety Gate alerts, national authorities have taken 5,794 follow-up actions to ensure that dangerous products were removed from the EU and EEA markets. These measures include withdrawing products from the market, stopping them at the borders, ordering online marketplaces to remove product listings, or recalling products.
Over the past years, the EU has modernised its laws on product safety. The General Product Safety Regulation strengthens enforcement, improves the effectiveness of recalls of dangerous products and requires businesses to offer remedies to consumers for recalled products. The new Toy Safety Regulation bans the use of harmful chemicals in toys and gives stronger powers to national authorities to detect and remove dangerous toys from the market. In addition, the Commission has also improved online market surveillance with a number of new tools. The eSurveillance Webcrawler, for example, enables national authorities to detect and request the removal of products offered online that are already listed in Safety Gate. In 2025, it scanned over 1.6 million websites and found more than 20,800 of such products. Consumers can also report safety issues in the Consumer Safety Gateway .
Next steps
The Commission is preparing together with national market authorities the 2026 product safety sweep to check compliance with the General Product Safety Regulation. A 'sweep' is a set of checks carried out online simultaneously to identify breaches of EU product safety requirements in a particular sector. The Commission is also currently organising Coordinated Actions for the Safety of Products . Under these Coordinated Actions, national authorities cooperate to test together specific products and exchange best practices to enhance their market surveillance operations. As announced in the Single Market Strategy 2025 and in the 2030 Consumer Agenda , the Commission will update the rules on market surveillance and compliance of products in the upcoming European Product Act later this year, with a view to strengthen EU market surveillance rules to ensure that only compliant and safe products enter the Single Market.
Background
The Safety Gate Rapid Alert System enables national market surveillance authorities from the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) to quickly circulate information about dangerous non-food products, and take swift action. Safety Gate alerts cover risks to human health and safety, such as choking, strangulation and damage to hearing or sight, as well as risks to the environment, energy resources and property.
The General Product Safety Regulation establishes a modernised framework to ensure the safety of products on the EU market. These rules clarify that all products sold in the EU online or offline must be safe, regardless of their origin. It requires online marketplaces active in the EU to register in the Safety Gate Portal and provide their single point of contact. By the end of 2025, more than 1,200 online marketplaces had registered.
