Yesterday, the European Commission presented facts from which we understand that 70% of Europeans regularly shop online, and 91% of all shipments to the European Union come from China.
“In terms of consumers, these two trends are also felt very clearly in Bulgaria. On the one hand, the number of consumers who shop online is sharply increasing. This was especially clearly seen last year during the “Black Friday“ campaigns. The other trend is the rapid increase in the share of Chinese goods in the total proportion of goods purchased online“, said Dimitar Margaritov, who is the former chairman of the Consumer Protection Commission, on the air of “This Morning“ on bTV.
„Now it will be interesting after the first steps of the administration of US President Donald Trump, which rather tighten the regime for importing Chinese goods into the US, what the situation will be in the European Union, but in any case, it is necessary to tighten the regulation from a safety point of view“, he also said.
And he explained that one of the biggest problems is precisely the safety of these Chinese goods.
„European legislation is extremely restrictive and detailed from a safety point of view. There are directives, regulations, in national legislation as well. These are laboratory tests, tests, certificates from accredited institutions“, Margaritov added.
According to him, a very large part of these goods enter customs without having such necessary documents for safety and origin. Inspections and attempts to prove certification follow, and if unsuccessful, the products are destroyed.
“I doubt that anyone exercises control over the customs import of these goods. Shipments of smaller volume, respectively, of smaller value, are differentiated. But this also increases the possible workload during the inspection. In other words, here we must mainly rely on the attention of consumers and their willingness to react“, he said.
And he recalled that in case of doubts about the safety of a received product, we can file a report with the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) or the State Agency for Metrological and Technical Supervision (SAMTN).