From left: Amina Makboul Market Surveillance Coordinator at Swedac, Virginijus Jusys, Karolis Ruzgys and Skirmantė Ambrazienė, Chief State Inspectors from the Inspectorate.
The visit was part of an exchange project arranged by the European Commission and aimed at exchanging knowledge between the countries working with the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD).
The three visitors from the State Non Food Products Inspectorate (the Inspectorate) were Skirmantė Ambrazienė, Karolis Ruzgys and Virginijus Jusys who all work as Chief State Inspectors. The mission of the authority in Lithuania is to protect the national market and citizens from dangerous and low quality non-food products and to perform market surveillance and protect consumers’ rights.
The exchange program was initiated by Skirmantė Ambrazienė who, via the European Commission’s web site, found a contact point at Swedac.
– I had previously been in touch with The Swedish Chemicals Agency and was keen to learn more about their field and how they perform market surveillance according to the GPSD, explains Skirmantė Ambrazienė.
Tailor made exchange program
She sent an application which was later approved and a tailor made exchange program for the Inspectorate was settled with the help and coordination of Swedac. During one week between 16-20 September three employees from the Inspectorate were in Stockholm and visited five market surveillance authorities in order to exchange ideas and learn more from each other.
– The main topic of this week has been to create personal contacts with the market surveillance authorities, learn from best practices and hopefully create collaboration in future, explains Skirmantė Ambraziené.
Differences between Sweden and Lithuania
The conditions of market surveillance in Lithuania are rather comparable with Sweden, for example when it comes to using check lists when inspecting manufacturers.
The largest difference is that the Inspectorate actually covers a wider field equivalent to four Swedish authorities: The Work Environment Authority, The Swedish Chemicals Agency, The Swedish Consumer Agency and The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning.
In addition the Inspectorate also works as a national coordinator of market surveillance in Lithuania, just like Swedac. The coordinative role at the Inspectorate, however, also includes performing market surveillance which is not the case for the market surveillance coordinators at Swedac.
Next step
The next step of the exchange program is to report and analyse the outcome.
– Once we are back in the office in Vilnius, three different reports need to be created; one for the Commission, one for the Ministry of Economy and the last one for our colleagues. Ideally we will in our daily work be able to adopt some of the useful tools that we bring back with us from this exchange project, says Karolis Ruzgys.
Skirmantė Ambrazienė and Karolis Ruzgys conclude by adding that it has been very useful to get a better understanding of how market surveillance is performed in Sweden. However, five days was not enough. During the next trip they would like to participate in activities such as joining one of the authorities, when carrying out market surveillance in the field.
For more information about the State Non Food Products Inspectorate: http://vnmpi.lt/