LEAD FEATURE MACHINERY SAFETY LEGISLATION CHANGE
requirements. The AR/RP must make this information
available to national surveillance authorities and
cooperate with them at their request. Any organisation in
the UK that offers AR services will no longer be able to
meet the requirement for being based in the EU, so
requiring an EU-based one for products being placed on
the EU market. MTA guidance (10 November, V2) for
firms exporting to the EU/NI is to appoint an AR there as
a CE mark/GB address combination will not be
acceptable, as well as to provide an EU or NI address on
the CE mark. Vice versa, of course, those based in the
EU will no longer be recognised in Great Britain from
1 January 2021, so one would need to be based in the
UK for products being placed on the GB market.
As regards the actual manner of marking the new
four-letter acronym on products, as is required for CE,
there is leeway being given for 24 months from
1 January 2021 such that an indelible mark on the
product is not being requested; it can be a label affixed
to the product or even on documentation, Gambell
highlights. There are rules as to the dimensions and
proportions of the mark, of course.
It’s all very clear, then? Sadly not, as BEIS’ Boniface
was candid enough to admit in the EAMA webinar. “The
main idea of these seminars is to try to make sure you
aware of the policy and of those, for a better word, softlanding
know all the answers. And I think also we’re trying to
understand what the implementation challenges will be
from companies. Because I know you probably think
government knows everything; we obviously don’t know
everything and there is a myriad of business models out
there, so we need to actually make sure that we know
how these policies are landing with different types and
shapes of companies up and down the country.”
So, it is no surprise that during the webinar
companies were encouraged to “keep their eye on the
government website”, while points arose that could not
be definitively answered. What you read here gives a
current-at-the-time, top-level overview. It does not cover
all the detailed points that will no doubt arise in coming
months, nor does it preclude the potential for change to
the areas discussed above.
All Machinery would observe is that the official online
Machinery Directive ( www.is.gd/omeriq ) runs to some
28,000 words and that strict adherence to it might be
expected during border checks made as goods pass from
Great Britain into the EU/EEA. Perhaps the ‘Guide to
application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC –
Edition 2.2’ ( www.is.gd/vijudo ) will become a more
interesting read for some; that’s over 180,000 words,
however – a good Christmas read, then. ■
Second-hand/used machinery
Guidance to the Machinery Directive ( www.is.gd/vijudo )
states that, in general, the directive “does not apply to
the placing on the market of used or second-hand
machinery”. It continues: “In some Member States, the
placing on the market of used or second-hand
machinery is subject to specific national regulations.
Otherwise, the putting into service and use of secondhand
machinery for professional use is subject to the
national regulations on the use of work equipment
implementing the provisions of Directive 2009/104/
EC.” The UK’s ‘The Provision and Use of Work
Equipment Regulations (PUWER) 1998’ derives from
that very directive.
A qualification to what this means is given in
Machinery Directive Article 15, which the guidance
document explains as this: “This indicates that
Member States remain free to regulate the installation
and use of machinery in accordance with the relevant
provisions of EU law, providing these regulations do not
have the effect of restricting the free movement of
machinery that complies with the provisions of the
Machinery Directive.”
The guidance notes an exception to exclusion from
the Machinery Directive: “The one exception is for used
or second-hand machinery that was first made available
measures we’re trying to introduce. We don’t
with a view to distribution or use outside the EU when it
is subsequently placed on the market or put into
service for the first time in the EU. In this case, the
person responsible for placing on the market or putting
into service such used machinery for the first time in
the EU, whether he is the manufacturer of the
machinery, an importer, a distributor or the user
himself, must fulfil all the obligations set out in Article
5 of the Machinery Directive.” And that includes affixing
the CE mark (or now the UKCA mark – Machinery
requested clarification from BEIS, none was received).
The wording on the HSE website covering this
exception is: “Where the second-hand equipment is in
scope of one of the European product supply Directives
and has not previously been put into service in the
European Economic Area (EEA – includes EU countries
and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), or placed
on the market of the EEA, the person importing it into
the EEA must meet the conformity assessment
requirements of the relevant European Directives,
including CE marking UKCA in future, presumably.”
In this specific case, then, the movement across
borders of second-hand equipment could potentially
become rather more complex (see extended online
article www.is.gd/muzowi ).
14 December 2020 | www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets
/muzowi
/www.machinery.co.uk