The ce mark is the official marking required by the European Community for all Electrical and Electronic equipment (and others) that will be sold, or put into service for the first time, anywhere in the European community.
It proves to the authorities, but also to the buyer -or user- that this product fulfills all essential safety and environmental requirements as they are defined in the so-called European Directives.
The ce marking directive (93/68/EEC) was adopted on
07-22-1993.
This directive gives a detailed description of the initials CE and any other marks specific to a particular directive and the
many ways conformity may be acquired.
In return for fulfilling the CE marking requirements, the manufacturer or its agent gets the permission to cover the entire European market using only one approval procedure for the topics covered in the
applicable directives.
No member state of the European Community can refuse any (electronic or electrical) product that has been
CE marked (unless fraud suspected). For some products however, national regulations
exist, as long as the requirements covered in these national regulations are not covered by a pan-European Directive.
The manufacturer needs however:
- to be European or,
- to have an official department in the European Community or,
-
to have an official agent or representative that is willing to share the liability for the
CE-marking and hold the so-called Declaration of Conformity.
Although the CE mark alone is sufficient to allow exporting to all EC member countries
(currently 26 states) without having to fulfill any national
regulations, their are some safety aspects that you need to be
concerned with:
-
You will have to translate some part of operating and/or safety instructions in the language of the country you are exporting to.
-
For radio equipment, not all frequencies
have been "harmonized" in the EC. Some frequency
allocationsa re not identical in Europe, so your equipment
may need to operate on allowed frequencies. A "notification
system" is put in place so as to deal with
non-harmonized frequncies.
The application of the CE mark
to your product must be founded on a Compliance
Statement (Declaration of Conformity :: DoC) made up by the manufacturer or representative in the EC.
The ce mark must be adhered to the equipment
when possible, and it's vertical height size must be 5 mm (0.2")
or more.
We provide a suitable
true type font to apply the ce mark to your documents from within word or any other windows document.
You may purchase this font <here>.
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