CE marked - easy if you have got a printer....
Fake safety permits that allow China’s toxic toys into Britain - Times Online
THE forgery of British safety certificates is rife among Chinese factories exporting toys to Britain, according to businessmen involved in the trade. They say the frauds include altering the date of tests on toys and using computer graphics to change “fail” to “pass”.
“Fake certificates are rife,” said a British buyer who sends millions of pounds of goods to the UK every year.
The certificates, coded EN71... Hang on a sceond, what's all this about "British safety certificates", British this and Britain that. As Christopher Booker points out the system (was) devised by the EU to guarantee that toys (and many other products) comply with safety rules.
Since Brussels took over competence for toy safety from national governments in the Eighties, its system relies on manufacturers labelling their products with a CE mark (for Communauté Européen). To justify this mark, the makers are supposed to have their products independently tested; and once an imported product bears the magic CE mark it cannot be inspected at the port of entry, or checked out by national inspectors.
The EU loves to boast of how its system is respected all over the world, but it has one fundamental flaw. There is in fact no way of guaranteeing that a product has been properly tested. All too often, not least in China, fraudulent CE marks are slapped on products indiscriminately, reducing the system to a charade.