2022/364/NL
EC/EFTA
NL Pays-Bas
  • H00 - EQUIPEMENTS DOMESTIQUES ET LOISIRS
2022-08-26
2022-06-02

Powerbanks

Amendment of the Commodities Act [Warenwetregeling] laying down general safety standards in connection with making an exception to the application of standard EN 60950-1.

This scheme makes an exception to the application of standard EN 60950-1. Article I of the draft of this scheme may contain technical requirements. The technical requirement concerns the exclusion of power banks from the application of standard EN 60950-1. 

Power banks generally comply with the standard EN 60950-1, which means that they are presumed to be safe in terms of the risks regulated in that standard. However, incidents regularly occur with these products that may be serious for the consumer (fire and/or explosion). These risks are not sufficiently regulated in standard EN 60950-1, because the requirements laid down in the standard do not meet the latest state of the art. A new standard, EN 62368-1, has been developed as a successor to EN 60950-1. This new standard complies with the latest state of the art, and thus provides a proper implementation of the legal safety requirements. However, this new standard has not been adopted under Directive 2001/95/EC. 

This scheme excludes powerbanks from the application of standard EN 60950-1. As a result, power banks that comply with this standard are no longer presumed to comply with the general safety requirement of Directive 2001/95/EC.

For the sake of completeness, it is noted that Article 13d of the Commodities Act contains a mutual recognition clause. The mutual recognition principle entails that an EU Member State shall not ban in its own territory the sale of goods that have been legally brought onto the market in another EU Member State on the grounds that the goods do not meet its own national regulations. It is important here that goods from another EU Member State offer at least an equivalent level of protection. The marketing of goods with an equivalent level of protection originating from other EU Member States falling within the scope of this regulation is therefore not prohibited on the basis of requirements laid down in this regulation.