"The Article analyses the reorientation of Community policy on achieving the internal market for products and the new efforts on a horizontal European product safety policy. It describes the most important precursors of the new internal market policy, namely ECJ case law on Articles 30 and 36 EEC since the Cassis de Dijon judgement, and the regulatory technique of the Low Voltage Directive. It then analyses in detail the new approach to technical harmonisation and standards, whereby the European Community restricts itself in its directives to setting “essential safety requirements”, leaving it to European standardisation bodies to convert these safety requirements into technical specifications. The Single European Act has brought important changes in the legal framework conditions for the European product safety policy. The concluding legal evaluation of the new approach regarding its compatibility with the EEC Treaty is dealing with the inclusion of standardisation organisations in the Community's law-making process and with the institutional balance between Council and Commission."

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