1 Delimitation of the study

Impact assessment of introduction of a general scope of the RoHS Directive – selected aspects

In the proposal for the recast of the RoHS Directive (COM(2008) 809 final, 2008) the European Commission has introduced two new annexes describing the scope of the Directive. Annex I describes the broad product categories while Annex II, amendable by comitology, provides a binding list of product falling within each category. All equipment which is not specifically mentioned in the list of equipment is considered to fall outside the scope of the Directive.

The Commission's proposal is currently (2009) negotiated in the Council Working Party on Environment (WPE). During the negotiations, Member States have expressed desire to change the description of the scope, going from the proposed binding list to a general definition of EEE.

The current study concerns selected aspects of changing the scope, and the objective of this chapter is to describe which aspects are covered by the study and which are not.

Extension of the scope of the Directive to cover all EEE is briefly discussed in the Impact Assessment prepared by the Commission (SEC2008) 2930, 2008) under "Options discarded at an early stage" in Annex III. It is stated that
"Extending the scope of RoHS to cover all EEE would have certainly been a far reaching amendment and did get support from several stakeholders (NGOs and Member States). Realizing it, would enhance the environmental effect of the Directive in the medium term and remove any uncertainty as to which equipment falls under the scope. However, the creation of the necessary negative list with exempted equipment (military equipment, aerospace applications, transport equipment, large stationary equipment) might lead to prolonged discussions, and most importantly, the investigation of the full impacts of such an option cannot take place within the time schedule of the present review".

Shifting from the approach introduced in the Commission’s proposal, to a general scope with a list of exemptions, implies reconsiderations for the following groups of electrical and electronic equipment:

Equipment which is necessary for the protection of the essential interests of the security of Member States, including arms, munitions and war material intended for specifically military purposes.
Large-scale stationary industrial tools.
Equipment which is specifically designed as part of another type of equipment that does not fall within the scope of the product categories of Annex 1, and can fulfil its function only if it is part of that equipment. This includes:
- Equipment designed for transport equipment
- Equipment designed for aerospace applications
- Equipment designed for “fixed installations”
- Equipment designed for other types of equipment e.g.furniture or clothing.
Equipment which is not intended to be placed on the market as a single functional or commercial unit.
Equipment that falls within the scope of the of the product categories in Annex I, but is not included in the binding list of equipment in Annex II of the Commission’s proposal.

The policy option of including large-scale stationary industrial tools was assessed in the study to support the Impact Assessment of the RoHS review (Abbayes et al., 2008). According to the study report no information was found to estimate the total market of these tools or the specific content of lead, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, mercury, polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDE) and polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) (hereafter referred to as the RoHS substances) in the tools.

In the Commission’s proposal “equipment which is specifically designed as part of another type of equipment that does not fall within the scope of this Directive and can fulfill its function only if it is part of that equipment” is defined as being outside the scope. The meaning of “another type of equipment” is not defined. The Commission’s FAQ on the current RoHS and WEEE directives indicates that “another type of equipment” also includes “fixed installation”. The definition of “fixed installation” vs. “finished products” is discussed further in the next chapter.

The policy option of inclusion of equipment used in “fixed installations” was assessed in the study to support the Impact Assessment of the RoHS review (Abbayes et al., 2008). The study prepared a non-exhaustive list of installations that could be considered to be covered by the term “fixed installations” including industrial installations/plants, electrical installations in buildings, power transmission network and 24 other types of installations. In the study it was concluded that no reasonable estimation of the affected number of products was possible based on existing data, and the quantification of the impacts was thus not performed for this option.

Within the limits of this study it has not been possible to cover all aspects of shifting to a general scope. As indicated in the study to support the Impact Assessment of the RoHS review, e.g. an assessment of large-scale stationary industrial tools or “fixed installations” would imply extensive collection of new data.

Consequently, the current assessment focuses on the following groups of equipment:

Equipment that is considered to fall within the scope of the of the product categories in Annex I in the Commission’s proposal, but is not included in the binding list of products in Annex II.
Equipment, considered by the authors to be outside the scope of all the categories in Annex I, but which can be considered “finished products” and which are not military equipment, a large scale stationary tool, designed as part of aerospace applications, transport equipment, and “fixed installations”.