While the RoHS Directive provides for exemptions on the grounds of certain limited technical and environmental, health and safety grounds, it was not anticipated by the Commission that this would be anything other than in exceptional circumstances. In reality, over 160 requests for exemptions have been published to date with formal decisions published on only 30.

The graph below shows the number of requests made since RoHS entered force, and the number formally approved, approved by the Technical Adaptation committee or lapsed.

Requests have been evaluated in batches; the 0th (original exemptions and pending exemptions) and 1st batch, plus those in Category 8/9 (monitoring and control/medical equipment) were studied by ERA, the rest have been reviewed by the Öko Institut.

Since several exemptions are based on more than one request the number of formally approved exemption requests to date (30) is more than the number of unique exemptions (25) which have been granted. Several of these exemptions were pending in the original Annex to the Directive and one (for hexavalent chromium in telecoms equipment) has lapsed (shown in orange under both batches 2 and 3). Three exemptions were approved by the TAC in November but are yet to be ratified.

This graph does not include data on rejected exemptions since the Commission operates no formal rejection process - inadequately supported requests are simply not taken forward for formal consideration by the TAC. Since only those exemptions in batches 6 and 7 are subject to review at present, one must assume that the remaining 65 have effectively been rejected.

The exemptions looked at under Category 8/9 will not be formally considered for exemption until or if the Directive is revised to bring these categories in scope. ERA concluded that 20 of the requested exemptions would be needed if the Directive is amended to include these Categories from 2012 (a probable earliest date).

Where next?
This article was taken from RE4view, ERA’s environmental newsletter providing up to date and expert analysis of all environmental regulations affecting the electrical product sector worldwide; RoHS, WEEE, REACH, EuP etc. To learn how to subscribe click here, phone +44 (0)1372 367444 or email.