The new Radio Equipment Directive (RED) has now come into force (on the 13th June) requiring manufacturers of equipment featuring radio devices to now declare their products against the new RED! The new Directive has some significant differences between the new RED and the old Radio and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment (R&TTE) Directive, but one of the biggest talking points has been about the availability of the harmonised standards to use.
Within the old R&TTE, the route to conformity for manufacturers allowed the assessment to be broken into three stages; assessment of electrical safety; assessment of the EMC performance; and assessment of the radio device. The electrical safety and EMC parts could be assessed under the self-declarations options given within the Low Voltage and EMC Directives, and the radio part could either be self-declared using a harmonised standard(s) or otherwise the product had to be assessed by a Notified Body.
The self-declaration option was regularly chosen under the R&TTE, however the significant changes under the new Radio Equipment Directive required all of the harmonised standard to be reviewed and potentially amended. As a result the list of harmonised standards was wiped clean and therefore removing the opportunity for manufacturers to take the self-declaration option. For a long time, the lack of standards was causing a high level of concern, but thankfully the list has been slowly populated with new standards.
Now following the recent update on the 8th June, an additional 29 standards were added to the harmonised standard list and there is now a healthier 140 standards on the list to use for self-declaration. The full list can be viewed on the European Commissions website: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/european-standards/harmonised-standards/rtte_en
If you need any help and support with CE Marking under the new Radio Equipment Directive, then please call us on 01564 792349.
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