The significance of health and well-being protection in the European risk assessment

Abstract

This thesis examines how much importance the European Union attaches to consumer safety in different settings of risk assessment and explores the reasons for the varying regulation regimes. It analyses the value of health and well-being protection vs. the value of the European Single market in two cases from practice, of which one dealt with dangerous vehicle lifts (non-foodstuff) and the other one with contaminated sprouts (foodstuff). Moreover, by comparing both plus their legal bases, it confronts the internal market driven risk management of non-foodstuff risks with the significantly more safety driven management of foodstuff risks and seeks to probe the causes for the differing approaches. In particular, it investigates the predisposition of foodstuff to be treated as so-called ‘emergencies’–in principle, a state of exception in the assessment of risks. More precisely, the present study seeks to show firstly that on EU level, the protection of the health and well-being of consumers mainly serves as a mean for the establishment of the internal market and that secondly, in contrast to non-foodstuff risk, foodstuff risks are usually treated as emergencies, meaning that after their occurrence, risk regulators exhaust all protection measures considered to be just barely tolerable for the (internal) market.