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Subject:
From:
[log in to unmask] (Jerry Cupples)
Date:
Mon, 18 Sep 1995 10:25:17 -0500
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Miles Littlefield, C.Q.E. asked:

>I have heard there is a new regulatory standard to be adopted by the EEC
>requiring all electric products sold in Europe to be "certified". This
>regulation is supposed to take effect January 1, 1996.

As of Jan 1, 1996, a transition period ends, and the entire European Union
(EU) requires conformance with the jointly adopted safety and
electromagnetic requirments. They will have in essence changed all their
various requirments to be "harmonized".

>The CE-certification has some requirements associated with it, but I don't know
>what they are. My company's sales force believes our products may fall under
>this classification.

They may be right. There are numnerous requirments, depending on the type
of product. Think of it as a combination of the UL and FCC requirements we
have here, and the CE mark means you meet all the relevant ones in Europe.

>My questions:
>
>1) Anybody heard of this?

Did you think you were the first? The European Union (used to be called
European Community) includes Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece.
Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the UK. They
have tried to adopt one uniform set of regulatory standards covering safety
and emissions from electronic products. Until recently, the individual
countries had their own regulations VDE, etc.

>2) Where does one obtain the requirements?

IEC - the International Electrotechnical Commission - in the US, ANSI is
our national committee to the IEC and gets a vote on the standards. I'd
call ANSI first.

CENELEC - European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization - they
publish EN and HD documents

I believe you can order such documents from Compliance Engineering magazine
508-264-4208.

>3) How does one determine if one's products require the certification?

Either by testing by a "Notified" organization or "self certification",
depending on the requirement.

You sound like you need help, my suggestion would be to contact a testing
service such as Inchcape Testing Service 508-263-2662

You might also go to a good library, and lookup a magazine called
Compliance Engineering. They publish a comprehensive annual Reference
Guide.


Jerry Cupples
no letters after my name, please.
Interphase Corp
Dallas, TX




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