Market surveillance is a duty which rests on the national authorities for ensuring that only safe products are made available in Norway.

Its purpose is to check products covered by harmonised goods regulations to see that only those which conform with the applicable regulations/standards are sold in the internal EU/EEA market.

Market surveillance is defined in Regulation (EC) no 765/2008, implemented in the EEA goods legislation, as “… the activities carried out and measures taken by public authorities to ensure that products comply with the requirements set out in the harmonised EEA legislation and do not endanger health, safety or any other aspect of public interest protection”.

How is surveillance conducted?

Havtil conducts both proactive and reactive surveillance. In the first case, a planned approach is taken to investigating whether products made available in the market accord with the product regulations.

Reactive surveillance is conducted primarily on the basis of an incident or a suspicion that the product in question does not comply with the legal requirements.

Various reactions are available if possible breaches are found, including non-statutory measures, such as meetings, or statutory responses, such as import prohibitions or product withdrawal/recall.

See also: Supervision of goods (regjeringen.no) (in Norwegian only)

Havtil as market surveillance authority

Havtil is responsible for surveillance pursuant to the following regulations for products used in petroleum activities at land-based plants and fixed facilities offshore.

All these regulations are available only in Norwegian, and the English title is provided for convenience only.

A number of market surveillance audits have been conducted under the authority of the regulations listed above.  All these audits have been published at psa.no under audit reports.