I have been contacted by an attorney in Europe who follows developments
with the RoHS and WEEE Directives. He had not heard of the study request
paper which I commented on earlier today. He was also unable to find it
by going to the parts of the web site designated for both the Enterprise
and the Environment Directorates. So even though it is on the
ec.europa.eu web site, there are several factors which make it look
suspicious. 

I may have been taken in by my desire to see this be for real. I
commented in my previous posting about how surprised I was because the
document seemed so out of character. Beyond that, here are some concerns
that I should have given more weight to:

*    It is undated and has no sort of official heading.

*    While purporting to be a document from the Enterprise Directorate,
it appears on the Environment Directorate part of the web site.

*    The document properties show the author to be simply arocari, with
no further identification and no affiliation.

*    The document properties show that it is a .tif file and not an
ordinary Adobe .pdf file. The text is not searchable, and the viewing
quality of the print is quite poor.

*    The metadata for the document show Adobe Photoshop to have been
used to create the file, which seems unlikely for an official EU
document.

*    There are minor errors, such as two number three's on both pages 1
and 4. Also, sections 3.1 and 3.2 should properly be numbered 4 and 5,
rather than be subsumed under 3, which addresses only the WEEE
Directive.

*    While the document purports to be a request for proposal, there is
no information on how to submit the proposal or when it is due.

On the other hand, if this document is a forgery, it is a clever one,
done by someone who has a great familiarity with the kind of language
used in EU documents, and in particular, the two Directives. (On the
other hand, wouldn't a forger have tried to make the appearance of the
front page look more official?) He also must know how to hack into the
official web site to post it. Another possibility is that it comes from
a photocopy of a draft that was not intended for distribution, but that
still requires a hacker.

So in sum, I regard this document as a puzzle. Until further information
becomes available, I will no longer regard it as an official EU
publication. 

I wonder if the puzzle will ever be solved. If enough people find out
about the document and start asking questions, if it is not for real it
seems as if the two directorates will see to it that it is removed from
the web site. Such a removal would of course suggest a lack of
authenticity. As of this posting it is still at the URL that Chris James
gave, but it's after hours in Europe. If anyone notices that it is gone,
please tell the forum.

One would hope that enough questions would get asked to get some sort of
comment from the bureaucrats (which if it is a forgery may have been the
intent of the forger) but then, this is Europe.

 

Gordon Davy 

 


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