Radio Equipment Directive

The Radio Equipment Directive (RED, EU directive 2014/53/EU) deals with the placing on the market of radio-electric equipment. All product in scope of this directive and placed on the EU market must be compliant with this directive from 13 June 2017.

This directive has been published in 16 April 2014 and abrogated the directive R&TTE 1999/5/EC since 13 June 2016.[1] Equipment compliant with the former directive only won't be authorised to be placed on the market from 12 June 2017.

The delay on the publication and approbation of standards linked to this directive entails difficulties for economic operators to comply with this directive

Associated regulation

Harmonized standard

Harmonized standard defines the methods to follow to presume the conformity of the equipment to the essential requirement of the directive.

The list of harmonized standard is regularly published on the official journal of the European Union. Each harmonized standard covers one or some essential requirements. More than one harmonized standard can be needed to obtain a presumption of conformity to all the essential requirements of RED.

The European Commission delegated the writing of standard to ETSI and Cenelec.

For example, a Wi-Fi equipment will refer to the following harmonized standards:

  • EN 60950-1 (Essential requirement of article 3, paragraph 1, point a of the directive: safety – electrical safety)
  • EN 50371 (Essential requirement of article 3, paragraph 1, point a of the directive: safety – human exposure to electromagnetic fields)
  • EN 301 489-17 (Essential requirement of article 3, paragraph 1, point b of the directive: electromagnetic compatibility)
  • EN 300 328 (Essential requirement of article 3, paragraph 2 of the directive: efficient use of the radio spectrum)

Delegated acts

Delegated acts of the European Commission will be legal document that will define the different classes and categories of equipment for which specific essential requirements defined in article 3 paragraph 3 will apply.

Implementation in member states

Germany

Researchers of the TU Darmstadt claim that the German draft law disallows operation of flashed devices, even if they date from before introduction of the new directive.[2]

Difficulties for economic operators to comply

Delay on the publication of harmonised standard

The economic operators are facing to difficulties to comply with this new directive. The list of harmonized standard is still incomplete. For example, the harmonised standard for protocol Wi-Fi 5 GHz, for FM receiver, and all standards dealing with EMC and safety are missing.

The European Commission should propose a pragmatic solution.[3] Nevertheless, the industry associations highlight that it will be impossible for product to comply with new standards overnight,[4][5] Especially since new technical requirements may lead to design modification on some categories of product.

FSFE stance

The Free Software Foundation Europe calls the directive the Radio Lockdown Directive.[6] The FSFE claims that the directive will make it harder for small businesses to develop routers, since they will be tivoised and therefore GPLv3 incompatible.

The FSFE furthermore argues that the tivoisation will disable the Freifunk project,

gollark: Why? I flashed my Samsung phone off Linux just phone.
gollark: No, it uses a stripped down busybox.
gollark: No, I am axiomatically faster.
gollark: It is expanded by the shell, see.
gollark: Not with `/*`.

See also

References
  1. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/european-standards/harmonised-standards/rtte_en
  2. https://web.archive.org/web/20170426085142/https://www.seemoo.tu-darmstadt.de/eu-radio-directive-statement/
  3. "FAQs – Radio Equipment Directive (RE-D)".
  4. "Warning: there might be a long wait for your next mobile device".
  5. "Free roaming doesn't matter if we have nothing to roam with".
  6. https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective/
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