Over the last 40 years, product Legislation within the EU has come a long way since the ‘Old Approach’ in which national authorities drew up technical legislation, going into great detail. In order to address the problems with the often ‘unwieldy’ legislation produced by the national authorities, the ‘New Approach’ framework was introduced in 1987. This framework aimed to restrict the content of legislation to ‘essential requirements’ leaving technical details to European Harmonised Standards. Whilst a significant improvement was made with the ‘New Approach’ framework, it was decided that the framework did not create the necessary level of trust between Member States to allow authorities to accept products they could not vouch for. As such in 1989 & 1990 the Council adopted a Resolution on the Global Approach and Decision 90/683/EEC which laid down the general guidelines and detailed procedures for conformity assessment. Based on these frameworks, 27 directives where produced whose scopes collectively covered a wide range of industrial and commercial products.
Towards the end of the 90’s the European commission started to review the implementation of the ‘New Approach’ framework in the Directives and concluded in 2003 that there was a clear need to improve:
The review of the current framework and Directives eventually led to production of a package of measures known as ‘New legislative framework’ which was adopted 9th July 2008 and entered into force 1st January 2010. The package of measures published in the Official Journal of the European Union which make up the ‘New Legislative’ framework consists of:
Of these three measures, the one which is likely to affect the majority of manufactures significantly is Decision 768/2008/EC, the provisions of which will be incorporated in existing Directives as and when they are revised and is in effect, the template for future product harmonisation legislation.
The consequence is that existing CE Marking Directives are currently being reviewed and revised, which means that manufacturers will need to review their existing level of conformity and ensure that they are prepared for the forthcoming changes in CE marking.
For more advice about the implementation of the new legislative framework, or to find out how the CE Marking Association can help you, please contact us as below:
