Any @namespace rules must follow all @charset and @import rules and precede all other non-ignored at-rules and rule sets in a style sheet. According to IETC WebKit is the only engin which gets this wrong (is too lenient on when you can use @namespace): http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/css3/namespaces/syntax-021.xml I'm not sure how much this matters in practice.
Weird, we had an effort to ensure such restrictions right some time ago. Apparently, this case was missed.
Safari Technology Preview 152 pass all these test cases now: https://wpt.fyi/results/css/css-namespaces?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&view=subtest&q=css%20namespace I am going to mark this as "RESOLVED CONFIGURATION CHANGED". Thanks!
We have ietestcenter/css3/namespaces/syntax-021.xml in the WebKit repository, and it passes.