Scope:

Low Voltage Directive 2014/35/EU

Evaluation Findings:

The overall conclusion is that the Directive is relevant, effective, efficient, coherent, and has EU added value. However, specific issues have been identified such as economic operators would welcome the introduction of internet related solutions for marking and documentation. However, consumers feel that it will decrease their ability to find and understand the information.

Coherence issues with the Machinery Directive and the Radio Equipment Directive remain and stakeholders would like more clarity. The proposal for the revised Machinery Directive aims at bringing greater clarity to the interplay between the two pieces of legislation.

Member States have different abilities to identify uncompliant products during the conformity assessment procedure, and this might create an uneven playing field. Furthermore, due to the introduction of Wi-Fi connection in equipment, competency gaps for the testing and market surveillance authorities can appear. Overall, the effectiveness of market surveillance activities is currently seen as uneven throughout the EU.

The increased phenomenon of e-commerce makes it challenging to sample products or conduct risk assessments. Also, this leaves room for uncompliant products to be sold by extra-EU competitors in the internal market.

Estimated savings and benefits

Concerning the efficiency of the Directive, the benefits generated by the Directive outweigh its costs for each type of stakeholders – including national authorities, economic operators (irrespective of their size of place in the value chain) and consumers, both individually and as a whole.

According to both economic operators and consumers, the requirements related to marking and documentation are affecting the efficiency of the Directive given that they do not facilitate the use of internet-related solutions in combination with information on the product/in manuals.

The costs related to standards are estimated between 1 and 5 % of the annual turnover. Economic operators acknowledge the importance of standardisation and they feel that the costs are high in proportion of the benefits. However, this factor is outside the scope of the Directive.

The remaining of the costs (procedural compliance costs, administrative costs and specific resource costs) for economic operators are viewed as less problematic.

Consulted stakeholders provided very limited quantitative data on the costs and the benefits of the Directive during the evaluation. There are two main reasons to that:

The Directive sets few obligations directly for stakeholders and provides the overall framework through the referral to other instruments (Market Surveillance, CE Marking, Conformity Assessment, Harmonised Standards).

In addition, the Directive is now fully integrated in the national regulatory framework and it is challenging for stakeholders to assess (quantitatively) the costs and benefits that arise from the application of the Directive.

Even though some specific issues were highlighted by the evaluation, the conclusions revealed that the Directive is relevant, effective, efficient, coherent and has EU added value. Therefore, no procedure for revision of the Directive was initiated.

The Directive still responds to the current needs of free circulation because it prevents diverging regulations between the EU Member States, and it favours the intra EU trade with benefits for both economic operators and consumers. The Directive is generally seen as contributing to an effectively operating internal market for electrical equipment in its scope. It facilitates intra-EU trade by establishing a set of rules and procedures that are integrated into the harmonised standards. All interested parties confirmed that standards are effective means to comply with the Directive while keeping pace with technological innovations. No major cases of discrepancies have been detected across the EU Member States in implementing the Directive.

However, market surveillance is not considered effective in implementing and enforcing the Directive. The development of e-commerce adds additional challenges to its enforcement as it leaves room for uncompliant products not being intercepted, therefore, affecting the level playing field on the internal market. Market surveillance is outside the remit of the Directive. However, with the implementation of the Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance, which enters into force on 16 July 2021, the issues related to enforcement, identified by the evaluation, will be tackled.