Committee on Petitions Ordinary meeting
12 October 2026
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PETI European Parliament
Follow its sittings00:07 - 01:33
Speaker 1
Dear members, welcome to PETI committee meeting. Are you ready? Good. Perfect. If there are no objections, the draft agenda of the today meeting can be adopted, yes?
Okay. Dear members, dear participants, I would like to inform you that today's meeting interpretation has been granted by 16 languages. Teraz przejdę na język polski, bo wszystko tu jest bardzo skomplikowane dzisiaj, a mamy bardzo ograniczony czas, z góry apeluję do państwa przy wypowiedziach o oszczędność czasu, dlatego że mamy oczywiście wspaniałych tłumaczy, ale też ten czas ich jest ograniczony, więc będę starał się bardzo konsekwentnie egzekwować czas, który dla państwa jest przeznaczony. Więc bez zbędnej zwłoki przechodzimy do rozpatrywania petycji. To jest punkt trzeci dla państwa informacji, petycja numer 1422/2026, którą złożył Gerasimos Makris z Grecji w sprawie zmiany projektu geometrycznego oznakowania CE.
01:33 - 01:47
Speaker 2
Składający petycję uczestniczy w posiedzeniu zdalnie. Mr. Petitioner, five minutes for you and next two minutes. Okay?
01:47 - 03:03
Speaker 5
Hello. Thank you so much, Chair, honorable members of the committee, representatives of European Commission, thank you for giving me the opportunity to present petition 1422 of 2026. My name is Gerasimos Makris and I'm a Greek citizen living in Spain and above all a European consumer. My petition raises a very simple question: if a European conformity mark is intended to communicate trust and compliance, should an ordinary consumer be expected to examine tiny geometric details in order to recognize it correctly? Next slide, please.
The CE marking has an important role in the single market. By affixing it, a manufacturer declares responsibility for conformity with the applicable European Union requirements. Is it not a EU certificate of origin and it is not an approval stamp issued by EU authority, but to consumers those two letters are nevertheless an important and familiar visual signal. Next slide, please. The problem I am asking you to examine is a visual confusion.
03:03 - 04:14
Speaker 3
Marks can appear on products that resemble the official CE symbol closely enough that an ordinary consumer may not immediately notice the difference. This issue is often discussed using the expression China Export.
I do not rely on the claim that this is an official Chinese conformity mark. My concern is broader and simple. Lookalike marks can exploit the visual familiarity of CE. Next slide please. So, the designation can come down to geometry.
The proportion of the letters and particularly the space in between C and E. But unfortunately consumers do not shop with a technical drawing or a ruler in their hands. Next slide please. On a charger, adapter, battery, toy, small electronic product or other compact items, the mark may be only a few millimeters high. At that scale, subtle geometric differences become even harder to recognize quickly and confidently.
04:14 - 04:19
Speaker 4
This is why I believe this is not merely a graphic design question. It is a con-
04:19 - 04:24
Speaker 9
Mr. Petitioner, please speak slower, okay?