The 47th meeting of TCAM and the 13th meeting of TCAM Experts Group were held last 16 April in Brussels.
Those meetings were chaired by the European Commission (EC) and attended by representatives of the member states, the Association of Notified Bodies, standardisation organisations and other relevant organisations such as manufacturer associations and consumer representatives.
Significant topics considered at these meetings included the following:
- The EC asked the member states in default to send in the 2017 activities reports, in accordance with article 47.1 of the RED: “Member states shall submit to the Commission regular reports on the application of this Directive by 12 June 2017 and at least every two years thereafter”;
- The artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) technologies are being studied by the EC working groups to consider the respective directives: RED, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) or Machinery Directive. The EC plans to present at the next TCAM meeting a document with developments regarding those subjects, along with the directives applicable to each technology;
- A delegated act (DA) is being prepared in accordance with RED article 44 for the Galileo system, which according to the EC will be totally functional by 2020. This initiative is limited to smartphones and does not cover tablets. Some comments requested by the EC were received; it will forward them to the legal services. The DA’s final text will be studied at the next TCAM meeting;
- Radio equipment operating under 9 kHz was previously analysed under the EMC Directive and is now covered by the RED, though there are still no harmonised standards. It is thus somewhat difficult for the member states to take uniform positions in their approach. Some member states indicated that in this phase the manufacturers only need to request authorisation for them to be granted the respective licence;
- Several meetings have been held with manufacturers regarding a common charger and plans call for a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to be signed in late 2018. As soon as there is a draft MoU it will be sent to the member states for eventual comments/contributions. The Parliament will then act, mandating the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)/European Committee for Electro-technical Standardisation (CENELED) to produce an applicable harmonised standard. In this case, the Low Voltage Directive (LVD) will be considered, because such devices must respect electrical safety requirements;
- A new European market inspection and control campaign on local radio area networks (RLANs), focusing on active or deactivated digital frequency selection (DFS), began in January 2018. The campaign’s results are expected in June, with the respective report at the end of the year.
The next meetings will be held on 31 May and 1 June 2018.
