Wireless headphones, remote-controlled drones or power packs – the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) took two million more products off the market in 2021 than in the previous year. The reason is usually labeling or security gaps.
The Federal Network Agency stopped the sale of almost 23 million banned electronic products last year. Among them were 7.7 million wireless headphones that were illegally working on frequencies reserved for security-related services such as the police or fire brigade, according to the supervisory authority. Millions of extremely cheap measuring devices and remote-controlled drones were also banned from sale. For example, the network agency often complained about the lack of CE markings or the lack of contact details for the provider.
Number of blockedElectronics products increased in 2021
“The Federal Network Agency takes consistent action against non-compliant products and prevents them from being offered on the German market,” said the President of the supervisory authority, Jochen Homann. In this way, the Federal Network Agency makes an important contribution to consumer protection.
Compared to the previous year, the number of blocked electronic products increased by almost 2 million. The lion’s share of the blocks affected online trading. Here, the authority identified a total of 1936 products that did not meet the European requirements. They have been banned by the platform operators. This affected 21.4 million individual devices. Online dealers, who offer their products in millions of units, have been the focus of investigators for years, as many of theirElectronic products open up security gaps.
Due to controls in the German retail sector, the network agency issued 23 further sales bans and called for the correction of defects in a further 1095 cases. It was often about LED lighting and power supplies.
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Customs reported around 6,500 suspicious consignments to the Federal Network Agency last year. In around 91 percent of the cases, the electronic products were not released for the German market because there were clear defects. A total of around 320,000 products were affected.