What are authorised representative obligations?

Authorised representatives have a number of responsibilities with regards to the Market Surveillance Regulation and EU harmonisation legislation.

We have broken the authorised representative obligations them down into 7 clear points.

1. Authorised representatives must verify the EU declaration of conformity or declaration of performance and technical documentation have been drawn up for products that are required to have these documents in place.
2. They are obligated to keep the declaration of conformity or declaration of performance at the disposal of the market surveillance authorities (link to “What are market surveillance authorities?” article) for the period required by the legislation.
3. They must ensure that the required technical documentation can be made available to the market surveillance authorities upon request.
4. Authorised representatives must provide the market surveillance authorities with all relevant information and documentation to demonstrate a product’s conformity. The documentation must be available in a language that can easily be understood by the authorities.
5. They are obligated to inform market surveillance authorities in case they suspect that a product presents a risk.
6. Authorised representatives must cooperate with market surveillance authorities to ensure that the immediate, required, corrective action is taken to resolve a case of non-compliance with the applicable legislation.
7. In case a solution is not possible, they are required to mitigate the risk, either upon request from the market surveillance authorities or on their own initiative.

Specific directives and regulations

It is important to know that certain industries have more specific directives and regulations, depending on the type of products sold. Any specific directives and regulations must be taken into account by authorised representatives.

Examples of product types that have specific directives and regulations are:

Toys (following the Toy Safety Directive), electrical equipment (following the Low Voltage Directive, EMC, RoHS, RED), radio equipment (following RED), cosmetics (following Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009), personal protective equipment (following the PPE Regulation), machinery, medical equipment, construction products (following Regulation (EU) No 305/2011) and finally the WEEE Directive and the REACH Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006.