Electrical safety: low-voltage electrical equipment

KEY POINTS

Directive 2014/35/EU lays down the responsibilities of manufacturers, importers and distributors in regard to the sale of electrical equipment designed for use within certain voltage limits:

• all electrical equipment on sale in the EU must bear the CE marking to show it meets all the essential safety requirements of EU legislation;
• before obtaining the CE marking, the manufacturer must conduct a safety and conformity assessment¹, draw up the technical documentation demonstrating the compliance of the equipment and issue and sign an EU declaration of conformity;
• importers must check whether manufacturers have carried out the conformity assessment procedure correctly and inform the authority responsible for safety monitoring if they consider that equipment does not conform to the essential safety requirements;
• the EU declaration of conformity and the technical documentation must be kept for 10 years;
• instructions and safety information must be written in a language easily understood by end users as determined by the national authority concerned;
• manufacturers and importers must indicate their contact details on their electrical equipment.

In addition, the directive specifies the steps to be taken by national authorities who monitor safety to identify and prevent the sale of dangerous electrical equipment in the EU.

Internal market emergency mode

Amending Directive (EU) 2024/2749 seeks to avoid disruptions to the internal market in the event of an emergency by ensuring that, once an internal market emergency mode, as set out in Regulation (EU) 2024/2747 (the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act), has been activated by means of an implementing act adopted by the Council of the European Union, designated crisis-relevant goods and services² can be placed on the market as rapidly as possible.

Directive (EU) 2024/2749 amends Directive 2014/35/EU setting out how these emergency procedures would apply. Among other things, the new rules:

• require conformity-assessment bodies to prioritise applications for conformity of crisis-relevant products over those for products that are not;
• allow EU Member States, on an exceptional basis and where there is a duly justified request, to temporarily authorise the placing on the market of equipment without carrying out the normal conformity-assessment procedures, where the involvement of a notified body is mandatory and can ensure that all essential requirements are met;
• permit Member States’ competent authorities to presume that equipment manufactured in accordance with EU standards, relevant applicable national standards or relevant applicable international standards developed by an accredited international standardisation body, identified by the European Commission as suitable to reach conformity and ensuring an equivalent level of protection to that offered by the harmonised standards, complies with the relevant applicable essential requirements;
• give the Commission the possibility to adopt, by means of implementing acts, common specifications on which the manufacturers can rely in order to benefit from a presumption of conformity with the applicable essential requirements (implementing acts laying down such common specifications remain applicable for the duration of the internal market emergency mode).