Legal and technical analysis of the new Machinery Regulation

When, in 2016, the Commission announced that Directive 2006/42/EC had been analyzed with a view to its revision, the news caused some perplexity, particularly among manufacturers. Within the Machinery Working Group –, one of whose authors was a constant presence from 2000 to 2023 –, some experts wondered how it was possible to revise a directive which, six years earlier, had come into force throughout the European Union.

Two decades before the birth of the REFIT program , which will enable the revision of the Machinery Directive, qualified experts from all over the world had communicated on the limits of machine learning techniques in safety situations. The iterative system of risk assessment and reduction that Directives 98/37/EC and 2006/42/EC had imposed as a filter for the passage of any machine from design to marketing had also been consolidated and well integrated by stakeholders. It is therefore hard to imagine that the policy-makers in the Commission's mechanical engineering unit did not have such information at their disposal.

Among the many angles that could be used to analyze the regulation under review, the authors (one a lawyer, the other an engineer) have chosen a reading that combines the presentation of new elements and their comments with an analysis of the allegations made in the text.

This article is therefore aimed at a heterogeneous audience of engineers, lawyers and researchers. We hope it will help to bring out the key concepts ignored by the regulations, and to revitalize the efforts of stakeholders to remedy the approximations and inconsistencies expressed therein.

The general operation of the new Machinery Regulation will therefore be presented (section 1 ), before moving on to mandatory...