New EU rules to ensure safety of machinery and robots

(STRASBOURG) - The EU Parliament and Council agreed a new machinery regulation Thursday, adapting rules to address emerging risks posed by new technologies to machinery products and ensuring their safe operation.

"The updated machinery rules will help us to protect EU workers and consumers better and will harmonise safety rules across EU countries," said Czech industry minster Jozef Síkela, for the EU presidency: "This will also greatly enhance the credibility and good name of the European industry and increase its competitiveness on the global stage."

The Regulation covers machinery consumer products and industrial machinery, ranging from heavy-duty construction machines to entire industrial production lines, as well as highly digitalised products like robots or manufacturing 3D-printers. The new rules will reinforce people's trust in the next generation of machines, foster innovation and boost the machinery sector's competitiveness in the single market and globally.

The new Machinery Regulation will:

• Ensure machines are safe and increase users' trust in new technologies. Manufacturers will have to ensure that machinery products fully respect the essential health and safety requirements set out in the Regulation. Six categories of machinery will be subject to mandatory third-party certification, complemented with a future proof process to update this number. The rules introduce new safety requirements for autonomous machines, human-machine collaboration and, for the first time, the safe use of Artificial Intelligence systems in machinery. To demonstrate compliance with the legal requirements, manufacturers can continue to rely on a stock of harmonised standards, continuously updated to technical progress, facilitating innovation and strengthening the competitiveness of the sector.
• Reduce administrative burden and costs for manufacturers. The rules introduce administrative simplifications like allowing digital formats for user manual instructions. This will help industry to save up to €16.6 billion per year. The new rules also set the path for adapting the conformity assessment fees to the needs of SMEs, which represent 98% of the machinery sector. In addition, the new rules enhance coherence with the Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Resilience Regulations.
• Foster legal certainty. The new Regulation establishes clear and proportionate rules, which will be uniformly applied across the EU, and increases legal certainty for manufacturers. It clarifies issues related to scope, definitions, essential requirements and conformity assessment procedures. The final text further clarifies the notion of substantial modification of products.
• Establish more effective market surveillance. The new rules align the safeguards against non-compliant machinery products to those used in the wider EU legislative framework on products.

The provisional agreement reached today is subject to approval by the Council and the European Parliament. After the formal steps of adoption have been completed, member states will have 42 months to apply the rules of the regulation.

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on machinery products