These technical guidelines for the application of Directive 2009/48/EC on the safety of toys aim at providing necessary information in order to elaborate adequate technical documentation. The focus is the safety assessment to be carried out by manufacturers.

These technical guidelines are for all parties affected by Directive 2009/48/EC commonly referred to as the TSD (Toy Safety Directive). Appropriate conformity assessment procedures to be followed by the manufacturer were laid down in order to ensure compliance with the essential safety requirements. Internal production control based on the manufacturer's responsibility for the conformity assessment has proven adequate in cases where he has followed the harmonised standards, the reference number of which has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) covering all the safety requirements for the toy. In cases where the harmonised standards do not exist the toy should be submitted to third party verification through an EC-type examination. The same should apply if one or more of such standards has been published with a restriction in the OJ EU, or if the manufacturer has followed such standards only in part. The manufacturer can submit the toy to EC-type examination in cases where it considers that the nature, design, construction or purpose of the toy necessitates third party verification.

To complete the legal obligations of the manufacturer which aim at ensuring the safety of toys, an explicit obligation to carry out an analysis of the hazards that the toy may present and an assessment of the potential exposure to them, is included in new TSD 2009/48/EC. With regards to chemicals, this includes in particular an assessment of the likelihood of the presence in the toy of prohibited or restricted substances. Manufacturers are obliged to keep this safety assessment in the technical documentation to allow market surveillance authorities to perform their tasks.

The technical guidance for the application of the Toy Safety Directive is available here.