The EU Machinery Regulation: on the home straight

The new Machinery Regulation is intended to:

• Ensure the safety of machinery and increase user confidence in new technologies, such as robots and machines employing machine learning
• Reduce administrative overhead and costs for manufacturers
• Enhance legal certainty
• Make market surveillance more effective

Section A of Annex I, formerly Annex IV of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, contains a list of high-risk machines subject to mandatory third-party testing and certification – even where harmonized standards exist. The agreement currently makes provision for six categories of machinery in Section A of Annex I, supported by rigorous procedures for the addition of further categories or deletion of existing categories.

The references to the future AI Regulation have been deleted, as it was foreseeable that the discussion of this item would continue for some time. This enables the procedure for the Machinery Regulation to be concluded independently of the AI Regulation.

It now remains only for the Regulation to be adopted officially in the European Council and Parliament. The meeting of the Parliament's responsible Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) is scheduled for 1 March, with a vote in plenary in April or May. The Council is expected to rule on the Regulation in its session on 23/24 March 2023.

Following adoption of the Regulation, it will be published in the Official Journal of the EU and will enter into force 20 days later. However, its application becomes mandatory only after a transitional period of three and a half years.