Shortly after the EU RoHS 2 Directive was published in 2011, a few concerns were identified about some of the wording in RoHS 2 and its interpretation.

Some manufacturers in the medical devices industry raised a concern that the use of the term “made available on the market until 22 July 2019” in referring to substance restrictions for products newly in scope of RoHS 2 will prevent those products from being refurbished and then resold after 2019. The medical equipment industry is especially impacted in that it frequently refurbishes its products and then re-sells to health care providers that can’t afford the new equipment.

The language in RoHS 2 also missed an exclusion for spare parts for products that are newly in scope (other than medical devices and monitoring and control instruments).

The European Commission plans to publish an amendment to the scope of the RoHS 2 Directive to address the issues. In an “Inception Impact Assessment“ , the Commission indicates that its preferred option is to:

• remove the “made available” clause and simply provide a requirement that all other EEE that did not previously need to be compliant, must be compliant by 22 July 2019.
• Add in a spare parts exclusion for such products.

In this way there are no limitations in refurbishing products or in repairing products that were legally put on the market.