In this article, Donald Sweeney and Bill Stumpf, correctly point out that the new EMC directive, Low Voltage Directive and Radio Equipment Directive do not have a transition period.
Whenever the EU (European Union) publishes new directives for electronic equipment compliance, it sends waves through the industry. Remember when the EU first published the EMC Directive in 1996? We thought the world would end because our products had more regulations to meet. Well, we survived that shift and others that have followed. But, those directives had transition periods where your product could comply with either new or old regulations.
Not this time.
The EU has published three new Directives for the electrical sector, but this time, there is no transition period. The Directives affected are:
RED (Radio Equipment Directive): 2014/53/EU
The new LVD (Low-voltage Directive): 2014/35/EU
The new EMCD (EMC Directive): 2014/30/EU.
In my opinion, the reason there is no need for a transition period is the fact that these new directives do not introduce new technical requirements for electrical equipment. The changes in the directives are mainly related to the integration of the formulation of the obligations of economic operators as introduced by Decision 768/2008. In this Decision, the European Commission clarified what the responsibilities of the manufacturer, importer, authorised representative and distributor with regard to product compliance are. The Decision already is directly applicable, without transposition into national legislation of the EU Member States, ever since it was adopted in 2008.
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