The 41st meeting of the Administrative Cooperation Group in the scope of the Electromagnetic Compatibility Directive (EMC ADCO) was held last 27-29 September in Sofia, Bulgaria, chaired by Stephan Winkelmann and attended by 33 representatives from 28 member states. Dorota Papiewska attended on behalf of the European Commission (EC).
The following stand out among the subjects considered at the meeting:
- The market supervisory authority under the Electronic Compatibility (EMC) Directive in Bulgaria is the State Agency for Metrological and Technical Surveillance. In 2015 that authority inspected 391 equipment items in the scope of the EMC Directive and 187 equipment items in the scope of the R&TTE Directive. Most of those control actions were administrative/documental. The most common non-conformity found was the lack of EC labelling on equipment;
- Proposals for future European market control campaigns, which will focus on the following equipment: inductive devices and e-cigarettes. The code of practice for the former has already been produced and at least ten countries will take part in the respective campaign. The e-cigarette campaign does not yet have a code of practice; although it only begins in 2017, some countries have already shown interest in participating;
- The EC representative mentioned that many countries have yet to transpose the new EMC Directive 2014/30/EU. They are therefore unable to penalise economic operators based on that directive;
- The guide for applying the EMC Directive is being prepared and should be ready by December 2016;
- Risk assessment in the scope of the EMC Directive. The document on the assessment of three powerline communication modems was presented, in accordance with the new standard EN50561-1. The three modems meet the evaluated requirements of standard EN50561-1 (reference to EN55022, section 5.1) if no data transmission occurs. If the transmission rate is equal to or above 10 percent, then the three devices exceed that standard’s limits. Note that from 9 October 2016 on the member states should apply the aforesaid standard for risk assessment;
- Regarding the matter of receivers for digital video broadcasting - satellite, it was decided that they would shift from the EMC Directive to the Radio Equipment Directive, 2014/53/EU.
This Group’s next meeting will be held in the Netherlands on 3-6 April 2017.
