Here in Austria junk stores, flea markets,... sell whatever junk they want. The buyer has to know whether it's safe. Some time ago I bought a slide projector with a rubber cord which had the bare copper sticking out. The flea market guy plugged it in right in front of my eyes! And he's a policeman!
An ugly thing are old UK appliances without plugs getting to Austria. When I was about 9 or so I found an old reel-to-reel tape recorder at a dumpster. It had a 3x0.5mm2 (or probably the British equivalent, anyway, it was scarily thin) flex without a plug. Back then (prior to ECN) neither me or my dad knew anything about foreign color codes, so we had to guess. Our first guess was according to our good old system: Black is phase. Red is ground. So green should be neutral...
Electric irons have always had cloth cords except for some very cheap 80ies models, and the classic black7white zigzag pattern cord is still available at every hardware store in 2.5m pieces. Individual conductor insulation is rubber. Price used to be 80 Schilling for that piece, which would come to 2,30 Euro/m.
