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Machinery Directive guide updated

Brief overview of the new version of Machinery Directive “2006/42/EC”.

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Machinery Directive guide updated

The EU publishes an application guide for every common market directive. The purpose of these guides is to explain the concepts and requirements of the directive in order to ensure that it is consistently interpreted and applied throughout the entire EU. The guides are therefore aimed at anyone dealing with products for the European common market: manufacturers, designers, operators, retailers, sales operations, market monitoring bodies, professional associations, inspection bodies, and service providers.

The application guide for Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC has been revised and published first in English:

Guide to application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC<br/> Edition 2.1 – July 2017 (Update of 2nd Edition)

Among other things, the following points have been updated:

  • Since version 2 of the guide was released in 2010, Directive 2009/127 (machinery for pesticide application) and Directive 167/2013 (approval and market surveillance of agricultural and forestry vehicles) have been published. 
    They have now been incorporated.
  • Information as to when a single conformity assessment needs to be performed for large systems (assembly of machinery). 
  • Some parts, for example “§ 46 Partly completed machinery”, explain the facts in more detail and with examples.
  • Chapters have been added to the guide: SPECIFIC GUIDANCE DOCUMENTS
    • Safety fences
    • Emergency stop devices
    • Drilling machines
    • Manually-loaded trucks for the collection of household refuse incorporating a compression mechanism
    • Interchangeable equipment for lifting persons and equipment used with machinery designed for lifting goods for the purpose of lifting persons
    • Classification of equipment used for lifting loads with lifting machinery 

The content in these chapters has been published in the past, but has now been added to the guide.

In general, phrasing and legal terms have been revised, and situations have been described with more precision and explained with examples. Experience has shown that it will take a while for the guide to be translated into German. You can view details of the changes in our smart space, where you can also download the document. You need to log in to access them.

smart space: Machinery Directive Guide

Dirk Szurowski
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Blog post Dirk Szurowski