Last July, the president of Italian Association of Lighting Manufacturers (Assil) Paolo Targetti, presented a complaint to Court against the Ministry of Industry [Ministero delle Attività Produttive]. With this strong action Italian lighting producers want to remark the weak activity of the Government against the importation from Asia and China of electronic and electrotechnical material not consistent with international safety standards.

“We are overrun by thousands of products really dangerous for the end-consumer”, Targetti said speaking at the Association’s annual meeting. Today, Italy is the European country where border controls are more systematic: about 30 per cent of the European confiscations of counterfeit goods takes place in Italy. And still, “whereas on the one hand we register a good action of control by the Customs Agency [Agenzia delle Dogane] and the Revenue Guard Corps [Guardia di Finanza], on the other hand we witness the lack of initiative of the Government in face of this phenomenon. In spite of the many alarms, till now the Ministry has carried out only 19 withdrawals of dangerous products from the market”.

Source: Il Sole 24 Ore