Cableways Impact Assessment Study - Final Report - saferail.nl

Risk & Policy Analysts
Is the cableways sector characterised by a lack of transparency meaning:
compliance with the relevant legislation is not ensured, it is difficult to determine
who should be responsible for ensuring compliance, and it is difficult to trace the
origin of the relevant products?
Are there significant imports of cableway products into the EU requiring the
responsibilities of importers and distributors to be defined more succinctly?
With regard to the above questions, the European cableways sector consists of a
relatively small number of producers of whole installations (around 35) and a
somewhat larger number of producers of subsystems and safety components (this
study has identified at least 85 such companies). Generally speaking, stakeholders
believe that the sector is small, transparent and stakeholders are familiar with each
other. As a result, it is suggested that there are no problems with regard to product
traceability or with companies attempting to avoid their obligations; in fact it was
noted that manufacturers are keen to ensure compliance with the relevant safety
requirements as an accident involving their installation would have grave reputational
consequences and may force the company out of business. In addition, as noted in
Section 2 of this report, imports of cableways into the EEA are essentially nonexistent,
perhaps with the exception of those from Switzerland; however, Swiss
companies are subject to the same requirements domestically and do not circumvent
the Cableways Directive in any way. As regards subsystem and safety components,
there is no evidence of significant imports from outside of Europe (in fact, several
stakeholders noted they were not aware of any such imports). It appears that ropes are
an exception to this, although a major rope manufacturer did not agree with this
statement and stated that there are no imports from outside the EU and the cableway
rope market has been traditionally national rather than international.
Two stakeholders (a rope manufacturer and a notified body) noted that there are
imports of cableway ropes from outside of the EU. The rope manufacturer stated that
there might be ten to twenty companies in the EU which import ropes which are
produced outside Europe into the EU and sell these on to hundreds of other
companies. This manufacturer has pointed to possible compliance issues with rope
imports from Asia and identified potential benefits from defining the specific
obligations of importers and distributors. Stakeholders in the Czech Republic also
suggested that imports of ropes from Asia and Russia are a serious problem and while
the main problem appears to be enforcement, amendment of the Cableways Directive
is supported.
While there currently do not appear to be imports of whole cableway installations into
Europe, a cableway manufacturer noted that it is possible that such imports may
commence in the future. In particular, there is already a nascent cableway industry in
China and it is possible that in the future they may wish to start exporting to Europe.
In fact, there have been cases of installations in China which were copies of
installations manufactured by one European producer and which were labelled as a
product of this manufacturer. These installations have been involved with accidents
leading the Chinese authorities to approach this European manufacturer. It is
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