On June 29, 2022, the new Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 was officially published in the Official Journal of the European Union to address the technological evolution trend of digital, interconnected and intelligent machinery. 

Significant revisions have been made to the 2006/42/EC mechanical directive to meet the health and safety requirements for more interconnected intelligent machinery. This mechanical regulation was previously adopted by the European Council on May 22, 2022. Once implemented, it will replace the current EU mechanical directive 2006/42/EC and will come into effect officially on July 19, 2023, with a 42-month transition period. It will be officially mandatory to implement on January 20, 2027.

The main differences between the new machinery regulations and the original machinery directive:

Regulations rather than directives; 

Increase legal certainty and apply it uniformly in each member state (for example, by making substantive amendments); 

The sequence of changes to the terms and attachments; 

Integrate the regulations related to security functions concerning artificial intelligence; 

Integrate the relevant cybersecurity regulations of the security control system, as well as the compliance-related software and data; 

Digitalization of the user manual, assembly instructions and EU compliance/corporate statement; 

When there is no suitable unified standard, the general norms serve as a backup solution. 

Simplify the guarantee procedures and align them with other legislation - self-participation behavior using machine learning methods; 

Appendix I ① Adjustment of the "High Risk" Machinery Scope (Original MD 2006/42/EC: Appendix IV) 

The mandatory conformity assessment of the 6 product categories by the authorized institutions (refer to Appendix I①, Part A) 

"Substantial modifications" include; 

Obligations of economic operators (Chapter 2): Economic operators fall into the following categories: manufacturers, importers, distributors, and natural or legal persons who make substantial modifications to machinery.

Appendix I

 ② Appendix III - Basic Health and Safety Requirements (EHSR)

The selected important modifications EHSR, such as:

New basic health and safety requirements:

The issue of obtaining the customs clearance documents for mechanical equipment when exporting to the EU market merely requires compliance with the relevant product directives and standards set by the EU, in order to prevent the equipment from causing harm to people. ECMG can provide services ranging from product design, risk analysis, mechanical functional safety to product safety testing.