Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity

The EU Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity is the doc­u­ment that states that that the prod­uct sat­is­fies the essen­tial require­ments of the applic­a­ble leg­is­la­tion. By draw­ing up and sign­ing the EU Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity, the man­u­fac­turer assumes respon­si­bil­ity for the com­pli­ance of the prod­uct.

The CE mark­ing direc­tives impose an oblig­a­tion for the man­u­fac­turer, or his autho­rized rep­re­sen­ta­tive estab­lished in Europe, to draw up a Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity (or ‘EU Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity’) as a part of the con­for­mity assess­ment pro­ce­dure. The Dec­la­ra­tion must be issued before the prod­uct is placed on the mar­ket in Europe.

The Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity must con­tain all rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to iden­tify the EU leg­is­la­tion accord­ing to which it is issued. The doc­u­ments also must con­tain the con­tact details of the man­u­fac­turer, the autho­rised rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and the noti­fied body if applic­a­ble, as well as the prod­uct details, and where appro­pri­ate a ref­er­ence to har­monised stan­dards or other tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions.
When a prod­uct is cov­ered by sev­eral CE direc­tives requir­ing an EU Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity, only a sin­gle one needs to be drawn up.

The Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity must be kept for ten years from the date of plac­ing the prod­uct on the mar­ket, unless the applic­a­ble CE direc­tives pro­vides for any other dura­tion. This is the respon­si­bil­ity of the man­u­fac­turer or the autho­rised rep­re­sen­ta­tive. For imported prod­ucts, the importer must take on this respon­si­bil­ity for the Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity.

The Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity must be made avail­able to the mar­ket sur­veil­lance author­ity imme­di­ately upon their request. And the direc­tives relat­ing to machin­ery, poten­tially explo­sive atmos­pheres, radio and ter­mi­nal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment, mea­sur­ing instru­ments, recre­ational craft, lifts, high-​speed and con­ven­tional rail sys­tems and con­stituents of the Euro­pean Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment net­work require that each prod­uct is accom­pa­nied by the Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity. That means that for these prod­ucts you need to send the Dec­la­ra­tion together with the prod­uct.

The Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity must be drawn up in one of the offi­cial lan­guages of the Euro­pean Union. The EU Mem­ber States may require that the EU dec­la­ra­tion of con­for­mity is trans­lated into their offi­cial lan­guage or lan­guages. The CE Direc­tives do not nec­es­sar­ily spec­ify who has the oblig­a­tion to trans­late. How­ever, log­i­cally this should be the man­u­fac­turer or another eco­nomic oper­a­tor mak­ing the prod­uct avail­able.

The con­tent of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity
  1. A prod­uct iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber. This num­ber does not need to be unique to each prod­uct. It could refer to a prod­uct, batch, type or a ser­ial num­ber. This is left to the dis­cre­tion of the manufacturer;
  2. The name and address of the man­u­fac­turer or the autho­rised rep­re­sen­ta­tive issu­ing the Declaration;
  3. A state­ment that the Dec­la­ra­tion is issued under the sole respon­si­bil­ity of the manufacturer;
  4. The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prod­uct allow­ing trace­abil­ity. This is basi­cally any rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion sup­ple­men­tary to point 1 describ­ing the prod­uct and allow­ing for its trace­abil­ity. It may, where rel­e­vant for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prod­uct con­tain an image, but unless spec­i­fied as a require­ment in the Union har­mon­i­sa­tion leg­is­la­tion this is left to the dis­cre­tion of the manufacturer;
  5. All rel­e­vant EU leg­is­la­tion com­plied with; the ref­er­enced stan­dards or other tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions (such as national tech­ni­cal stan­dards and spec­i­fi­ca­tions) in a pre­cise, com­plete and clearly defined way; this implies that the ver­sion and/​or date of the rel­e­vant stan­dard is specified;
  6. The name and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber of the Noti­fied Body when it has been involved in the con­for­mity assess­ment procedure;
  7. All sup­ple­men­tary infor­ma­tion that may be required (for exam­ple grade, cat­e­gory), if applicable;
  8. The date of issue of the Dec­la­ra­tion; sig­na­ture and title or an equiv­a­lent mark­ing of autho­rised per­son; this could be any date after the com­ple­tion of the con­for­mity assessment;
  9. Where sev­eral pieces of EU leg­is­la­tion apply to a prod­uct, the man­u­fac­turer or the autho­rised rep­re­sen­ta­tive has to pro­vide a sin­gle Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity in respect of all such acts.

If you are a prod­uct sup­plier you should pass Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity down the sup­ply chain to the end user as in most cases the final pur­chaser is enti­tled to receive a copy of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity for the par­tic­u­lar prod­uct. If you are aware of prod­ucts (other than those for which a Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity doesn’t have to be pro­vided, such as elec­tri­cal equip­ment under the Low Volt­age Direc­tive) that do not have a Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity, you should obtain the cor­rect one before sup­ply­ing the prod­uct onward.

Pur­chasers should retain Dec­la­ra­tions of Con­for­mity as they pro­vide doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that a prod­uct com­plied with the safety require­ments apply­ing to that prod­uct when first placed the mar­ket, or brought into use.

Hir­ers may also need to copy the Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity onto to users.

Warn­ing
Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity should be taken into account seri­ously as this can be rea­son that the prod­uct is banned in mar­ket from mar­ket from side of sur­veil­lance agen­cies. If prod­uct is imported in EU cus­toms will at first will ver­ify Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity, applied stan­dards and applied direc­tives. If some of stated stan­dards or direc­tives are out of date, prod­ucts will not be let in EU mar­ket and will be sent back to man­u­fac­turer.

Take close look at EMC MAR­KET SUR­VEILANCE CAM­PAIGN (2011) /​/​The admin­is­tra­tive com­pli­ance was shock­ingly low– only 28.8%, mainly the CE mark­ing and the Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity (DoC) was missing.//


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