The EU Parliament's Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) has published a first draft report on the successor to the Machinery Directive. What is good above all is that producer responsibility remains a Cornerstone of the legislation.

Brussels/Frankfurt, 29 October 2021 – "The rapporteur Ivan Štefanec has done a good job and presented a well-balanced first draft," says Dr Sarah Brückner, Head of Department Technical, Environmental Affairs and Sustainability at the VDMA, on the draft report from the EU Parliament. From the VDMA's point of view, the draft sets high safety standards without hindering innovation too much:"It is particularly positive that the focus is on the responsibility of the companies and that the draft confirms the importance of the manufacturer's self-declarations a way of conformity assessment. This is a real step towards good and modern legislation", praises Sarah Brückner.

"Manufacturer's self-declaration": safety allowing innovation

From the VDMA's point of view, the "manufacturer's self-declaration" has proven to be a modern way of ensuring the safety of machinery and at the same time allows to bring innovations to market quickly. "In mechanical engineering, we mostly produce tailor-made solutions or small series. Costly and time-consuming third-party certifications cannot be amortised true to the lack of large quantities and make it difficult to bring solutions quickly to customers. For competitiveness and resilient supply chains, we need precisely this kind of flexible and modern regulation," explains Dr Brückner. The VDMA representative clears up one prejudice: "Conformity assessment by the manufacturer is carried out following the same safety standards as that used by external service providers. The manufacturer takes full responsibility. We therefore support Ivan Štefanec's draft".