Section Menu

RoHS in the EU

1. TAC Meetings

At EU level, the Technical Adaptation Committee (TAC), chaired by the European Commission and comprising of Member State representatives, considers follow up issues related to the RoHS Directive.

The last meeting was held on 7 April 2009. The latest TAC meeting note can be found by following the link below.

Unofficial note of the Technical Adaptation Committee on the WEEE & RoHS Directives: 7 April 2009 (29KB)

2. European Commission FAQ’s

The European Commission has issued non-legally binding guidance in the form of a Frequently Asked Questions document. This was last updated in August 2006.

European Commission FAQ's Document

3. Exemptions

Article 5 of the RoHS Directive sets out the process for exemptions to be granted on the grounds that the use of alternative substances are either technically or scientifically impracticable.

Exemptions are for specific applications of the restricted substances and once agreed by qualified majority through a vote in the TAC, followed by publication of a Commission Decision in the EC’s Official Journal, apply to all uses of the substance in that application: there is no requirement to register particular products or those companies taking advantage of the exemption.

The European Commission has put each batch of exemption requests it receives out to public consultation and then contracted independent technical consultants to make recommendations. Details of those consultations are available from the Commission's website at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/events_rohs1_en.htm

All exemptions agreed can be found by looking at the Annex to the RoHS Directive and subsequent Commission Decisions amending the Annex. Copies of both the text of the Directive and all current Decisions can be found under the Documents section of the main RoHS page of this website.

4. Categories 8 & 9

Two categories within Annex I of the WEEE Directive are currently excluded from the scope of the RoHS Directive. These are Category 8 (medical devices) and Category 9 (monitoring & control instruments). Article 6 of the RoHS Directive, however, places an obligation on the European Commission to review the possibility of bringing these two categories into scope at some future point. To that end, the Commission appointed independent technical consultants to conduct a study on whether it was feasible to include the two categories; this report has now been completed and can be downloaded from http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/studies_rohs2_en.htm

The Commission invited stakeholders to propose additional topics that the review process should consider or additional elements that stakeholders considered relevant. That process is now complete and the Commission submitted proposals to The Council and European Parliament at the beginning of December 2008. These proposals can be downloaded from http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/index_en.htm

5. Transposition in other Member States

A final report on other Member States’ preparations for WEEE and RoHS was published by the (then) DTI in November 2005. A copy can be downloaded from this link:

Transposition of the WEEE and RoHS directives in other EU member states: November 2005. (1338KB)