Page 11 - CE Marking

PART 2 CE-Marking
8
completed, products from across the whole EUmay safely be assumed
to comply with the corresponding essential requirements laid down in
the EU directives. This is an obvious advantage.
European standardisation offices, such as CEN, CENELEC and
ETSI, release about a thousand standards every year. Standards are
produced by separate national bodies such as NEN in the Netherlands,
BSI in the United Kingdom, and DIN in Germany.
All these national bodies sell the harmonised EU standards, unless
these are not yet available, in which case they sell their own national
standards. In the CBI’s AccessGuide database, you can find the
websites of these institutes.
The NewApproach requires manufacturers to CE-mark their products
according to a certain test procedure, the so-called conformity
assessment.
This assessment is designed to test the safety of the product according
to the directive’s requirements and is based on a system of eight
modules. The modules determine which inspections are needed to
determine the safety risks for a specific product. Depending on the
risks involved, the procedure may involve third-party testing.
In order to facilitate the process of CE-marking for manufacturers
in developing countries, the CBI has developed a seven step
implementation plan, designed to guide manufacturers through the
entire process of CE-marking.
Here is a brief outline of the first two steps.
STEP 1: Finding The Directives
The first step towards CE-marking your product is determining which
directives apply to it. This means you have to know for which purpose(s)
A System of Modules