I think Finm is on to something and it’s about competition if the U.K. leaves the Eu. But the original post was basically saying other manufacturers in the Eu sell illegal and frankly dangerous materials, difficult to compete if you are following the rules and others aren’t. perhaps the Eu need to be stricter and stop companies selling illegal products.
The trouble the eu had, the Germans wanted everyone else to follow the rules they had made The french picked and choosed which rules to abide by Then about a half did play by the rules, more than any others and the later admittents were fuck you we are russians (ex) In an odd way, because we lost a big chunk of our manufacturing some time ago and others held onto it via dubious government support, we have been through the pain many in europe who are heavily manufacturing based, are about to go through. They had hoped the eu as a block could protect them but as seen with recent events, america versus china decides more about europe than the eu. The eu is only strong enough when it has more members with good economies putting in, that is where the strength is. So when the eu tries to be the sheriff and two thirds of it's organisation is based on poor economies and taking out, it ends up looking like a spaghetti western. Brexit will be blamed when the project fails but just like labour, the eu will fail because it stopped listening to those who make up the organisation.
Hi Allan The point I am making is that just because legislation comes to the U.K. via the EU does not mean it originated at the EU and that international standards are not confined to the EU. indeed the very method of communication we are using is itself an international standard
trade agreements involve convergence of standards. If we take “make our own laws” to mean exactly that then we will have divergent standards. Divergent standards costs business money as its twice the testing/certification/product management. My firm could easily manufacture and sell to North America, but it’s too expensive to get the necessary certification.
Surely it isn’t that onerous to achieve “Chinese Export” standard so that we can still mark goods as ‘CE’?
I don’t think you got the point I was making about illegal materials. the points were 1) despite having common product standards across the EU national application standards superseded these by controlling how they could be used. So the U.K. had control 2) the coalition then relaxed our regulations to be in line with the rest of Europe, except France, who had a stricter standard than we had, in order to “remove red tape”. Tories love deregulation, the problem is, the people get killed because of it
The reason China finds it easy to meet US and EU etc product standards is because it has whole cities manufacturing solar panels or car parts and accordingly they are such high volume that the cost of testing amortised across millions units is not an issue. if you are a UK SME manufacturing high end audio or some such, getting a £10,000 bill to re certify every product to a new EU or U.K. standard is going to be bitter pill to swallow
Rubbish.... Are you saying that we (UK) will no longer be able to certify to the international BS EN (to gain a CE mark) and that our labs and results from the last 30 years are suddenly null and void. Testing and Certification will carry over in both directions, anything else would cost both sides a fortune. What is a pain is having a CE approved product tested to UL standards (USA).... they aren't better or worse, just normally different. Even they will accept test results from another worldwide lab, so long as it tests the same criteria.
