The New Regulation On Hazardous Substances Directive Is Expected To Be Opened.

The EU is now revising the directive on the restriction of harmful substances (RoHS).

Since January 2010, the attitude of Member States has become clearer. Most of them want to cancel the detailed list of controlled products under the new directive.

The current directive is mainly for ten categories of electrical and electronic equipment, and a detailed list of controlled products is listed.

However, the detailed product list will not be seen again in the new directive.

In the past, several Member States opposed opening the scope of the directive, but now they are willing to accept the proposal. One of the reasons is that Denmark recently conducted an impact assessment study. It turned out that the scope of control of the open RoHS directive would not raise the related costs significantly.

However, the study also pointed out that the 77 product groups may be affected.

In the Danish impact assessment study (research scope is not covered by all equipment categories), 77 product groups that may be affected by the open control range come from different equipment categories, mainly large and small household electrical appliances, tools, toys and entertainment equipment.

The market for most related products is huge, but the related sales are only a few percentage points compared with the total sales of all electrical and electronic products.

The Danish study also found that a small number of products, if they did not use restricted substances, were converted to other materialized ones, which involved considerable administrative costs, including electrical or electronic toys without motor installations and furniture with lighting.

Several key industry associations in the EU (including the American Chamber of Commerce, DigitaEurope, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association and the European Chamber of Commerce) issued a press release in January 27, 2010. They jointly opposed the opening of the regulatory scope. They believed that the Danish impact assessment study was not comprehensive and therefore had to conduct a comprehensive and comprehensive impact assessment.

The European Equipment Manufacturers Association (Orgaime), which represents the European engineering industry, also openly opposes the adoption of an open regulatory framework for the restriction directive on harmful substances.

In February 1, 2010, Orgaime sent a letter to JiEvans, a member of the European Parliament, and pointed out that this major amendment would bring almost all production equipment of electrical and electronic equipment into the scope of supervision, but did not make any impact assessment.

The RoHS directive aims to eliminate harmful substances used in electrical and electronic equipment as far as possible.

The current directive prohibits the use of lead, mercury, cadmium, six valent chromium and certain types of brominated flame retardants.

As the industry generally believes that it is difficult to completely ban the above substances, the directive also includes a number of exemption measures.

In December 3, 2008, the European Commission put forward a directive to amend the bill. It is waiting for the European Parliament to launch the first reading procedure. The new directive will be passed by the end of this year.