John Woodgate states the legal position entirely correctly (for the EEA, I don't know about Korea):
The CE-marking directives (leaving aside CPR) have mandatory Essential Requirements - meeting those is the law, but testing to a standard or standards is not compulsory. Other than in the unusual situations requiring Notified Body involvement, you are free to decide how you demonstrate compliance, and your Technical File must contain sufficient evidence to support the claims you make in your declaration of conformity, which is a legal document. Standards are therefore voluntary, but often extremely useful. Their key benefit is where they provide a presumption of conformity, this greatly assisting any due diligence defence. Continuing to rely on a superseded standard removes that presumption of conformity, but it does not necessarily remove conformity. So any answer that says you "must" retest when a standard changes, or that you "must" comply with a particular standard, is simply not correct in law. What you most sensibly should do is to evaluate the changed standard, and see if its new provisions might affect whether or not you need to do anything. It is good practice for your Technical File to contain a note that you have carried out this evaluation exercise, even if your conclusion is "no action required". An enforcement action cannot be brought on the basis of "not meeting a standard". It can only be brought for "not meeting an Essential Requirement". Test labs will always want you to go down the testing route - a) because that's how they make their money and b)providing a pass/fail test report is a much easier job than having to think about legal compliance. A lab result also only tells you about the sample(s) tested, it doesn't know anything about your control of series production. Commercially, it may well be that the market requires you always to use the latest standards, but that it is a different argument to the legal one. John C -----Original Message----- From: John Woodgate [mailto:j...@jmwa.demon.co.uk] Sent: 31 August 2013 16:56 To: EMC-PSTC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG Subject: Re: [PSES] Retest because of supersded standard? In message <FCA549BE3ECF9D4CB8CB8576837EA48920A174@ZEUS.cetest.local>, dated Sat, 31 Aug 2013, "ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen" <g.grem...@cetest.nl> writes: >Are you still sure about your new Signature ?? Yes. But I'm now not sure of the point you are making. There is nothing in my post that you commented on which is inconsistent with what you are now posting. Nowhere did I even hint at not needing to justify a decision not to re-test, and 'justify' means providing evidence. -- OOO - Own Opinions Only. With best wishes. See www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Why is the stapler always empty just when you want it? John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com> - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>
