One of the key principles of the then ‘new’ European Directives was to establish a list of ‘Harmonised Standards’ published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). The publication of these standards was always intended to reflect the current ‘state-of-the-art’ in terms of testing and principles. It was anticipated that standards would not remain fixed forever but instead would evolve to reflect the changes in products and new technologies.
What is a ‘Harmonised Standard’?
A ‘Harmonised Standard’ is defined as one that has been developed by one of three European Standards Organisations (ESOs); CEN, CENELEC or ETSI, following a specific request (or mandate) from the European Commission. When a harmonised standard becomes cited in the OJEU, it provides what is known as ‘Presumption of Conformity’ for particular aspects of that Legislation. i.e. Complying with the standard in full meets the corresponding legal requirements.
After a legal test case in a Member State some years ago, a Judge ruled that as they were used in support of EU Legislation, Harmonised Standards were, in themselves, legal documents and needed to provide ‘legal certainty’. As a result, any new standards offered for citation in the OJEU are subject to additional scrutiny and must meet the Commission’s framework for legal certainty in addition to the technical requirements.
What is the ‘EMC conundrum’ in this scenario?
In recent years, several new versions of existing harmonised EMC standards have been developed by the ESOs, but for either legal or technical reasons (or both), the new versions have been rejected for citation in the Official Journal by the Commission. This has led to the situation where cited versions of standards offering Presumption of Conformity under the EMC Directive have become outdated. This is while the newest, non-cited versions represent the ‘state-of-the-art’ – the concept of ongoing standards development that all Manufacturers and Conformity Assessment Bodies are obliged to consider in their evaluation of a product.
This situation leads to the inevitable question as to whether an old, outdated standard offering Presumption of Conformity should still be used in preference to the latest State of the Art version. The answer is ‘it depends’. Manufacturers are required to perform ‘an adequate assessment of the risk(s)’ in their Technical Documentation. This would have to include any potentially new EMC threats not included or covered by the old versions of standards.
A straightforward response is to test to the latest version of the standard and include their reasons for doing so (and not choosing Presumption of Conformity) in their Technical Documentation’s risk assessment. This is the approach recommended by the European Market Surveillance Group for EMC, known as ‘ADCO EMC’.