The importance of staying up to date

The directives require all products to be manufactured to the latest/applicable standards at all times. Information on which standards are applicable can be found on the Internet (see Useful links) under Harmonized Standards. Here you should look at the dow date (dow = Date Of Withdrawal), which indicates the latest date when the old standard must be withdrawn. In other words: when the new standard must be complied with at the latest.

There will typically be 2-3 years from when a new standard is published in the Official Journal of the EU until the old one is discontinued; i.e. a transition period of 2-3 years.

The Low Voltage Directive is relatively innocent. There are many product family standards that have been in use for many years. Once a product is approved according to the applicable standards, there are usually quite long transition periods between the standard in use and the new version of the standard coming into force. Almost no new product family standards are introduced under this directive.

BUT beware of the EMC and RED (radio) directives!

When it comes to the EMC directive, many products have only had to comply with the generic standards for the first many years since the CE marking was introduced, but slowly more and more product family standards are emerging. If your product is covered by one of these, you must switch to compliance with the product family standard rather than the generic one. For example, there was a new standard that covers both IT and audio equipment, but more changes are on the way.