Purpose
The purpose of this Decision is to establish the requirements on the basis of which the Commission may request the relevant standardisation bodies to amend the relevant standard for lighters.
For the purposes of this Decision:
‘lighter’ shall mean a manually operated flame-producing device employing a fuel, normally used for deliberately igniting in particular cigarettes, cigars and pipes, and which may foreseeably be used to ignite materials such as paper, wicks, candles and lanterns, manufactured with an integral supply of fuel, whether intended to be refueled or not.
‘child-resistant lighter’ shall mean a lighter designed and manufactured in such a way that it cannot, under normal or reasonably foreseeable conditions of use, be operated by children younger than 51 months of age because of, for instance, the force needed to operate it or because of its design or the protection of its ignition mechanism, or the complexity or sequence of operations needed for the ignition.
‘child-appealing lighter’ shall mean a lighter whose design resembles by any means to another object commonly recognised as appealing to, or intended for use by, children younger than 51 months of age.
Requirements
(1) For the purpose of Article 4 of Directive 2001/95/EC, the specific child safety requirements for lighters shall be the following:
(a)
Lighters shall be child-resistant to minimise the ability and likelihood of children younger than 51 months of age to operate them;
(b)
Lighters shall not be appealing to children younger than 51 months of age.
(2) Paragraph 1(a) shall not apply to lighters intended to be refuelled for which producers provide on request to the competent authorities the necessary documentation substantiating that the lighters are designed, manufactured and placed on the market such as to ensure a continual expected safe use over a lifetime of at least five years, subject to repair, and which fulfil in particular all of the following requirements:
(a)
a written guarantee from the producer of at least two years for each lighter, in accordance with Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 5 ) ;
(b)
the practical possibility to be repaired and safely refilled over the entire lifetime, including in particular a repairable ignition mechanism;
(c)
parts that are not consumable, but are likely to wear out or fail in continual use after the guarantee period, are accessible for replacement or repair by an authorised or specialised after-sales service centre based in the European Union.
