Selling electronics in the EU; CE, EMC, RoHS, WEEE, batteries, USB-C, CRA

The Low Voltage Directive covers electrical safety between 50 and 1000 V AC and 75 and 1500 V DC, so a battery-powered device below that range is outside the LVD but still inside EMC. The EMC Directive applies to almost everything electronic: the product must neither emit disturbance nor be unduly disturbed. The Radio Equipment Directive swallows the LVD and EMC requirements for radio products, so a Bluetooth speaker is assessed under RED, not under three separate directives.

Each applicable act has to be named in a single EU declaration of conformity, and the manufacturer keeps the technical file for ten years. The importer must check that the manufacturer did all of this before placing the product on the market, and must put his own name and address on the product. If the file does not exist, the importer has placed a non-conforming product on the market and is the one an authority writes to.

The decision that costs money is whether the harmonised standards are fully applied. Under RED Article 17, a radio product that applies the harmonised standards in full may use internal production control; where they do not exist or are applied only in part, the manufacturer must use EU-type examination followed by conformity to type, or full quality assurance. That is the difference between a test report and a notified-body file.

Two things importers get wrong. First, the notified-body number only appears next to the CE marking where the module involves the notified body in production control; a self-certified product with a four-digit number beside CE is a red flag, not a reassurance. Second, one declaration covers all applicable acts: a supplier who sends separate ‘CE certificates’ per directive, issued by a laboratory rather than the manufacturer, has sent you test reports, not a declaration of conformity.

‘Homogeneous material’ is the word that decides the test cost. The limit does not apply to the product or even to the component, but to each material that cannot be mechanically separated further: the tin in a solder joint, the plasticiser in one wire sheath, the coating on one screw. A product that passes as a whole can fail on a single cable.

RoHS conformity is declared in the same EU declaration of conformity as the rest, and is supported by supplier declarations and, where doubt exists, analytical testing. The exemptions in Annexes III and IV are time-limited and expire per application, so a component that was compliant under an exemption three years ago may not be today. For an importer the practical control is a dated supplier declaration per component and a spot test on the parts most likely to fail: cables, solder, coatings and flexible plastics.

WEEE is a directive, not a regulation, which is exactly why it is painful: every member state has its own register, its own fee basis and its own reporting calendar. There is no single EU registration, and a German WAR number does nothing in France.

The producer for WEEE purposes is whoever first makes the equipment available in that member state, so for imported goods it is the importer or, in distance selling, the seller into that country. Directive 2012/19/EU also lets member states require a non-established distance seller to appoint an authorised representative in the country of sale, and most now do. The penalty for skipping it is not usually a fine first: it is a marketplace suspension, an unrecoverable back-payment of fees over the period you sold, and in some countries personal liability of the director.

The Battery Regulation replaced the old directive and applies directly, which removes the national variation on the substance rules but not on the registration: registers are still national. The obligation attaches to the person who first makes the battery available on the market of a member state, whether the battery is loose, in the box, or built into the appliance.

Portable batteries in appliances also have to be removable and replaceable by the end user, with limited exceptions, which is a design requirement rather than a paperwork one and is worth checking before you commission a mould. If your product carries an LMT battery, an EV battery or an industrial battery above 2 kWh, the digital battery passport applies from 18 February 2027 and needs data from the cell manufacturer that you have to contract for now, not later.

Read the party before you read the clock. Article 14 addresses the manufacturer, and Article 3(13) defines a manufacturer as anyone who has products with digital elements designed, developed or manufactured and markets them under his own name or trade mark. If you have electronics built to your own brand or private label, that is you, and the reporting duty is yours from 11 September 2026. If you import goods carrying the trade mark of a party established outside the Union you are an importer under Article 3(16), and Article 14 does not reach you. Article 21 separately imposes the manufacturer duties on an importer or distributor who markets under his own name or substantially modifies a product, but Article 21 itself only applies from 11 December 2027, so before that date the route that carries is the definition in Article 3(13).

As manufacturer you notify an actively exploited vulnerability simultaneously to the coordinating CSIRT and to ENISA through the single reporting platform of Article 16: an early warning within 24 hours of becoming aware; within 72 hours a notification with general information, as available, on the product, the nature of the vulnerability and the measures taken, which is expressly not a full report; and a final report no later than 14 days after a corrective or mitigating measure is available (Article 14(2)(c)). A severe incident runs the same 24-hour and 72-hour chain, and there the final report is due within one month of the 72-hour notification (Article 14(4)(c)) — a different clock, because it does not wait for a fix to exist. As a pure importer, Article 19 requires you to inform the manufacturer without undue delay when you become aware of a vulnerability, and to inform the market surveillance authorities immediately where there is a significant cybersecurity risk. No hourly clock applies to you.

From 11 December 2027 the CRA becomes part of the CE stack: essential cybersecurity requirements, a software bill of materials in the technical file, and a defined support period during which security updates are provided. Those are duties of the manufacturer; as a pure importer your own obligation under Article 19 is to place such a product on the market only where the manufacturer has met them, and a distributor carries a comparable checking duty before making it available. The cybersecurity requirements that currently sit under the Radio Equipment Directive delegated act (EN 18031, applying since 1 August 2025) are being folded into the CRA to avoid two routes for the same product. If your supplier cannot tell you today who patches the firmware and for how long, that is the gap to close first.

This is a hard stop at the border rather than a soft compliance point: a handheld mobile phone or a headset with a proprietary wired port is simply not placeable on the EU market, and no declaration cures it. What the device must have is a USB-C receptacle to EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 (Annex Ia, Part I, point 2) and, above the 5 V / 3 A / 15 W threshold, USB Power Delivery to EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021, with no proprietary protocol allowed to limit the full USB PD functionality (point 3). That is a construction requirement under Article 3(4) and it sits on the manufacturer. Products already placed on the EU market before the applicable date may still be sold through.

Two packaging obligations travel with it, and they are not in Article 3(4), which is why importers who look there do not find them. The pictogram showing whether a charging device is included comes from the new Article 3a(2), with the pictogram in Annex Ia Part III. The charging label giving the required minimum and maximum power and whether USB Power Delivery is supported comes from Article 10(8), with the label in Annex Ia Part IV; the same information belongs in the instructions (Part II). Where the device is offered with a charger, the buyer must also be able to buy it without one (Article 3a(1)). In distance selling the pictogram and the label must be visible and legible next to the price.

You as importer do not fit the USB-C port. You may only import where the manufacturer has carried out the conformity assessment and the documentation, the label and the pictogram are there: check that before shipment, not on arrival. Distributors and webshops carry a comparable checking duty and are themselves answerable for showing the pictogram and label at the price.

Alongside the label there is a second regulation with harder obligations: Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 sets ecodesign requirements for smartphones, mobile phones and slate tablets, and they have applied since 20 June 2025. The battery must survive at least 800 full charge cycles while keeping at least 80 percent of its capacity. Critical spare parts must be available for seven years after the last unit of the model is sold in the EU, and delivered within five to ten working days. Operating system upgrades must be offered for at least five years after the last unit is placed on the market. The device has to resist drops, scratches, dust and water, and repairers must get non-discriminatory access to the software and firmware they need. The label carries a repairability score, the first time an EU label does. If you import phones or tablets under your own brand these are yours to prove; if you resell a branded model, ask the supplier for the EPREL registration number before you list it.

Do not read the date and the duty out of the same article. Article 8 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1669 gives the date of application and nothing else; the registration and labelling duty is in Article 3(1), read with Articles 4(1) and 12 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369.

The word that decides who is liable is ‘supplier’. Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 defines it as the manufacturer established in the Union, the authorised representative of a manufacturer outside the Union, or the importer who places the product on the Union market. Import from a third country and offer the device in the EU first, and you are the supplier yourself: the label and the EPREL entry are your obligation, not your foreign factory’s. Buy in from an EU party that has already placed the model on the market and you are a dealer, with the duties in Article 4 of 2023/1669: the label visible at the point of sale, label and product information sheet in distance selling, and the energy class plus the available range of classes in every visual advertisement and in technical promotional material.

The EPREL registration is the trap, because it is not a test and not a mark: it is a database entry that must exist before the model is placed on the market, so before the first shipment is released, not afterwards. A retailer who lists a covered model without an EPREL entry is selling a product that cannot legally be there, and the label has to be shown in online listings too, not only in the shop.

Check the product group before assuming you are out of scope. The list has grown, and a device that was unregulated when you first imported it can be inside a new implementing regulation by the time you reorder. Where the group is covered, the requirements are specific numbers on energy, spare-part availability and repair information, not general principles, and they are the sort of thing a competitor reports to the authority rather than an inspector finding it.

There are in fact two overlapping requirements and they predate each other. Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 already required an economic operator in the Union for products covered by a list of harmonisation acts, including LVD, EMC, RED and RoHS, since 16 July 2021. Article 16 GPSR extended the same idea to consumer products generally from 13 December 2024. Most importers satisfy both with one entity.

What that entity actually has to do is short and awkward: hold the declaration of conformity and the technical documentation, verify that they exist, inform the authority when there is reason to believe the product presents a risk, and cooperate on corrective action. Naming a service provider who has never seen the technical file satisfies the field in the seller dashboard and not the law; when an authority asks for the file and it does not arrive, the product is treated as non-conforming.

Two halves, and importers usually only think about one. Emission is what your product puts out; immunity is what it can take. A device that passes emission and fails immunity still fails, and immunity failures show up as the product resetting or misbehaving near other equipment rather than as an obvious defect.

The obligation is on the manufacturer, and the assessment is normally internal production control against harmonised standards; there is no notified body for standard EMC work, which is exactly why the paperwork can be hollow. Ask for the accredited laboratory report with the measured margins, not a one-page certificate. If it is wrong and an authority measures it, the outcome is withdrawal from the market plus the cost of the recall, and for radio products it can also mean interference proceedings from the national spectrum regulator.