Sept. 24, 2003

CE stamp is not a safety approval

Let me reiterate Terry Fogle's point that a CE stamp is not a safety certification. I worked for a manufacturer of industrial instrumentation as the CE requirements were coming into force. As a product line engineer, I researched what was required by the European standards to properly self-certify the products and legally apply the CE mark. I then developed a test plan to certify our products so they could be legally sold in the European Union. Management decided that the testing and self-certification process was too expensive for the sales volume involved, so their solution was to leave the designs untested and (literally) rubber-stamp the export paperwork with the CE stamp. The CE stamp on a product doesn't mean a thing.

--Dave Thomson