Certificate of Conformity

Now this is a question we get asked a lot about and drives me mad, just think what the words are.. “certificate of conformity”.

It is a certificate to show conformity or compliance I hear you say. But to what? There is no standard certificate of conformity and in fact, certification by a 3rd party company is optional not mandatory. There are laws that have to be followed and in nearly all cases a simple “declaration of conformity” is required. There is not even a law stating CE certification is required! What? Why? Everything has CE on though. Yes, even CE is just a mark to show compliance to a set of directives and only a declaration from manufacturer is required. There are some exceptions to this such as UK plugs, sockets and fuses etc that actually require BSI or ASTA certification and others not relating to our type of business. A whole new ball game opens up when it comes to military and medical equipment compliance.

The typical “declarations of conformity” that are required for all products are…

• CE stating the applicable directives and standards of compliance such as EMC and LVD etc.
• RoHS 2.0, everything is required to be RoHS compliant and it is part of CE marking directive but a certificate is not needed.
• REACH, everything is required to compliant and guess what? a certificate is not needed either.
• Conflict Mineral Act, not European law yet but still a certificate is not needed.

So now you see a certificate is not needed and a “declaration of conformity” should state what is required otherwise it is a general term. In all cases before making a declaration, it needs to be made unique and traceable with a technical file held containing proof the product is compliant such as test reports.

Access to the technical file, some may request a copy of the certificate and test reports but the directives state the file is to be held in the supply chain, this means the manufacturer can refuse to even give us the certificates and reports….

” It is important to understand that only the authorities given power to enforce the directives have a right to see the technical file. It does not need to be published or given to customers. With the exception of the Medical Devices Directive, there is no clear requirement that the file should be kept on EU soil. However, for a manufacturer based outside of the EU, any approach made by the authorities will initially come to the authorised agent or the importer of the goods, so they must have access to the file to be able to fulfil their legal obligations.”

This suggests that if an authority wants proof, they come to us and we go to the manufacturer on their behalf, nowhere does it mention our customers or end users have a right to copies of the original documents.