Chapter VIII, market surveillance of products and Union safeguard procedure
Article 19: Market surveillance of products
The Union market surveillance rules apply, and where Article 14 is relied on the authority checks the assessment, reviews its use of Annex VI and then checks compliance.
- Citation
- Article 19, CELEX 32019L0882 (Directive)
- Binds
- Market surveillance authorities and the economic operators they inspect.
- In the instrument
- Chapter VIII, market surveillance of products and Union safeguard procedure
- Applies from
- 28 June 2025 for products placed and services provided from that date (Article 31(2)). The Article 4(8) 112 duty may be deferred to 28 June 2027 where a member state uses Article 31(3).
- Source
- EUR-Lex, CELEX 32019L0882
What it requires
Paragraph 1 imports a set of provisions from Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, including the framework for controls, the powers of authorities and the safeguard rules. Paragraph 2 tells the authority what to do when an operator has relied on Article 14: check that the assessment was carried out, review it and the results, and whether the Annex VI criteria were applied correctly, and then check compliance with the applicable requirements.
Paragraph 3 requires member states to give consumers, when they ask, the compliance information the authorities hold and the Article 14 assessment, in an accessible format, unless the regulation's confidentiality rules prevent it.
For an operator, the article sets the shape of an inspection: the file, the assessment and the actual product are examined together. A good declaration with a thin assessment is the usual failure.
In practice
Prepare one inspection pack rather than three separate folders. The pack should open with the declaration, then the technical file, then the Article 14 assessment if one exists, then the traceability extract and the complaint log. An authority that can follow that sequence in an hour is less likely to escalate.
What to do
- Keep the file and the Article 14 assessment where an authority can review them together.
- Be ready to show how the Annex VI criteria were applied, not only the conclusion.
- Respond within the authority's timetable and record the request.
- Provide consumer-facing compliance information in an accessible format where required.
Evidence to keep
- The technical file, declaration and assessment in one indexed pack.
- The Annex VI calculation and its source documents.
- The authority request log with dates and responses.
- The consumer information route and its accessible format.
Dates
- 2025-06-28Surveillance applies from this date. (Article 31(2))
Cross-references
Where teams get this wrong
An authority does not have to accept the conclusion of a disproportionate-burden assessment. It reviews the reasoning and the numbers, so a conclusion paragraph without the cost build-up is exposed.
Read from the Official Journal text of Directive (EU) 2019/882, OJ L 151/70, 7 June 2019, Article 19. Check it yourself: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019L0882. This page states the provision in our own words and is not legal advice; it does not certify any product or service.