RoHS Compliance for CE Marking: The Directive That Failed 53% of Products

In June 2026, the European Commission published the results of JACOP 2025, a coordinated market surveillance campaign that tested 173 electronic devices bought in stores and online across 13 European countries. 91 of them, 53%, failed. The average price of the products sampled was 10 EUR: fans, speakers, smart watches, toasters, hair dryers, garden lights.

Chemistry was only part of the problem. 41 products (24%) were flagged for missing, illegible or fake CE marking, or for the absence of an EU-based contact. The lesson for manufacturers selling into Europe: incomplete paperwork alone is enough to fail an inspection.

What Is the RoHS Directive and Which Substances Does It Restrict?

RoHS stands for Restriction of Hazardous Substances. The current version is Directive 2011/65/EU, known as RoHS 2, which restricts ten substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) sold in the EU. The original directive covered six substances. Delegated Directive (EU) 2015/863 added four phthalates, plasticizers used to soften PVC.

The limits apply per homogeneous material, a concept covered in detail below. These are the ten restricted substances:

The JACOP 2025 results show exactly where these substances hide in real products. Lead and cadmium appeared most often in solder points: 82 samples failed there. Phthalates showed up in the soft PVC insulation and sleeves of USB cables, power cords and plugs, with 51 failed samples. Brominated flame retardants were found in the hard plastic parts of five samples, and hexavalent chromium turned up in metal screws and iridescent metal components of three.

That distribution matters for your risk assessment. Solder joints and cable assemblies are where non-compliance concentrates, and both are components that manufacturers typically buy rather than make.

Does RoHS Apply to My Product?

RoHS applies to electrical and electronic equipment: any device that depends on electric current or electromagnetic fields to perform at least one intended function, or that generates, transfers or measures such currents and fields, up to 1,000 V AC or 1,500 V DC.

The directive organizes EEE into 11 categories, from large household appliances to medical devices and industrial monitoring instruments. Category 11 is the one that catches manufacturers off guard: “other EEE not covered by any of the categories above.” Since 2019, this open scope means that if your product runs on electricity and no exclusion applies, RoHS applies.

Article 2(4) lists the exclusions:

• equipment for military or space use,
• large-scale stationary industrial tools,
• large-scale fixed installations,
• means of transport,
• non-road mobile machinery for professional use,
• active implantable medical devices,
• photovoltaic panels in fixed installations,
• and equipment built exclusively for research and development available only business-to-business..

Machinery exporters should read the large-scale exclusions carefully. The thresholds are demanding, and the electrical and electronic components of an ordinary industrial machine, its control cabinet, drives, sensors and wiring, remain within RoHS scope as part of the CE marking obligations that apply to the machine.

Which RoHS Exemptions Can I Use, and When Do They Expire?

Exclusions and exemptions are different mechanisms, and confusing them is one of the classic RoHS mistakes.

An exclusion means the directive does not apply to your product at all. An exemption means the directive fully applies, and a specific use of a restricted substance is temporarily permitted anyway.

Annex III lists the general exemptions. Annex IV lists exemptions specific to medical devices and monitoring and control instruments. Two examples from Annex III that electronics manufacturers use constantly: exemption 7(a) permits lead in high melting temperature solders, and exemption 6(a) permits lead as an alloying element in machining steel.

Every exemption carries an expiry date. Renewal requests must be filed no later than 18 months before expiry, and the Commission decides through delegated directives after technical review. The dates move: in November 2025, the Official Journal published renewals for the heavily used 6(a), 6(b), 6(c), 7(a) and 7(c) exemption series, resetting their expiry dates.

This creates an ongoing obligation that many manufacturers miss. If your product relies on an exemption, your technical documentation must reference it explicitly, and someone must track its expiry. A Bill of Materials that is compliant today becomes non-compliant the day its exemption lapses, with no change to the product itself.

What Does “Homogeneous Material” Mean Under RoHS?

The substance limits apply per homogeneous material, not per product and not per component. A homogeneous material is one that cannot be mechanically disjointed into different materials: the copper of a wire, the PVC of its insulation, the tin-silver alloy of a solder joint, the coating on a screw.

This granularity changes everything about the compliance math. A single USB cable contains several homogeneous materials. A circuit board contains dozens. A finished product can easily contain hundreds. Each one must individually stay under the limits: 0.1% lead in the solder, 0.1% DEHP in the cable sleeve, 0.01% cadmium in the contact plating.

Averaging is not allowed. A product whose overall lead content is far below 0.1% still fails if one solder joint exceeds the threshold. This is why full chemical testing of a product is expensive: the cost scales with the number of materials, not with the size of the device.

How Do I Demonstrate RoHS Compliance? The Two Routes

There are two ways to build RoHS compliance evidence, and the choice drives both cost and risk.

The documentary route relies on your supply chain. You collect material declarations from your suppliers stating that each component complies with the RoHS limits, you assess whether those suppliers and declarations are trustworthy, and you consolidate everything into technical documentation. EN IEC 63000 is the harmonized standard for this: it defines how to assemble RoHS technical documentation and gives you presumption of conformity when followed. No laboratory is involved.

The testing route sends materials or components to a lab for chemical analysis, typically XRF screening followed by wet chemistry where needed. It produces the strongest evidence and the highest invoice, multiplied by the number of homogeneous materials you decide to verify.

Most manufacturers combine the two: documentation as the baseline, targeted testing for high-risk materials such as solder, cable assemblies and platings from less established suppliers. The decision logic mirrors the broader choice between documentation and laboratory work in a CE marking testing strategy, where the reliability of your supply chain determines how much physical testing you can responsibly avoid.

Where Does RoHS Sit in My CE Marking Documentation?

RoHS is a CE marking directive. Compliance with it is one of the legal requirements behind the CE mark on any electrical or electronic product, alongside directives like the Low Voltage Directive, EMC or RED, depending on the product.

Two documents carry the weight. Your EU Declaration of Conformity must list Directive 2011/65/EU among the legislation the product complies with. And the evidence, supplier declarations, the supplier reliability assessment, test reports, exemption references, lives in the technical file that you must keep for ten years and produce when an authority asks.

The conformity assessment procedure for RoHS is internal production control, Module A.

No Notified Body reviews your RoHS evidence before you sell.

You self-declare, and the verification happens afterwards, if and when market surveillance knocks. That structure is exactly what makes the quality of your technical file the whole game.

Is Anyone Actually Complying With RoHS?

Half of the market apparently is not. The JACOP 2025 failure rate of 53% across 173 sampled products says plenty about the low end of the electronics market, and online sellers performed worse than physical stores: 49 failed samples against 37.

The more useful question is whether non-compliance carries consequences. It does, on two levels.

The first level is coordinated surveillance. JACOP-style campaigns end with real measures: authorities notified the businesses behind all 91 non-compliant products, reported several to the Safety Gate rapid alert system, and in most cases withdrew the products from the market or banned their sale. The 24% documentation failure rate shows what surveillance authorities check first: a missing or fake CE mark and the absence of an EU-based contact are grounds for action before any lab result comes back. For a non-EU manufacturer, that contact is typically an EU Authorised Representative, and its details must appear with the product.

The second level is national border control, and Spain is the clearest example. Since Royal Decree 27/2021, the Spanish SOIVRE inspection service runs a mandatory pre-clearance control on imported electrical and electronic equipment covering RoHS and WEEE obligations. Customs cannot release the goods without a SOIVRE certificate, and the certificate must clear both the RoHS and the WEEE checks. A container of non-compliant devices does not get seized from Spanish shelves; it never reaches them.

How to Get RoHS Right Before an Authority Asks

First, confirm your scope position. Establish whether your product is EEE under the directive, whether any Article 2(4) exclusion applies, and which Annex III exemptions your bill of materials actually relies on, with their expiry dates on someone’s calendar.

Second, choose your evidence route deliberately. Map your suppliers, decide where declarations suffice and where testing is warranted, and run a gap analysis against EN IEC 63000 to find the holes before an inspector does.

Third, consolidate everything into your technical file and reflect RoHS in your Declaration of Conformity, so that a request from a market surveillance authority, or a SOIVRE inspector holding your customer’s container, gets answered in days rather than weeks.

If you want a clear picture of where your product stands before your next EU shipment, request a quote and we will map your RoHS obligations and the evidence you need.

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