EN 60204-1 not harmonised to Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC

See this article Machinery Directive Harmonised Standards - new list, of 1 June 2010, which highlights the fact that EN 60204-1 is now Harmonised.

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At the time of writing EN 60204-1 Safety of machinery. Electrical equipment of machines. General requirements, which is generally considered to be one of the key machinery safety standards, is not harmonised to the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC. This will come as a surprise to many people because the standard's absence from the list of harmonised standards has received very little publicity - in stark contrast to the situation concerning EN 954-1 (see this article: EN 954-1 harmonised to Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC).

Having sought clarification from CEN/CENELEC (the European Committees for Standardisation and Electrotechnical Standardisation, respectively), MachineBuilding.net has received the following response from Catherine Vigneron, Programme Manager for Electrotechnology & ICT:

"EN 60204-1 is not in the last MD list (2006/42/EC) published in December 2009. The standard was not ready to be published under the new MD (2006/42/EC) at that time. In the meantime, relevant steps have been taken and EN 60204-1 has been offered to the Commission last week [w/c 15 February 2010] for OJ publication purpose. The Commission is informed and aware of the situation and inform us that a new list could be published soon."

Unlike EN 954-1, the future of which was very uncertain, it appears that EN 60204-1 will shortly be on the list of standards harmonised to the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC - as most machine builders would expect it to be.

As soon as EN 60204-1 is published in the OJ (the Official Journal of the European Union), MachineBuilding.net will report it. To keep up to date with further developments, subscribe to our free email newsletter.