What is meant by CE Self Certification?

There are a lot of misconceptions about the CE marking system in the minds of the manufacturers. One of the biggest myths surrounding the CE certification process is that the product must be tested and certified by a third party certification body for getting it CE marked. A lot of companies have wasted a good amount of money in paying the third party certification bodies only because of this one misconception. Let us clear the air for you. Unlike in the case of various other certifications like the CSA, UL, etc CE marking does not require a third party certification body for many products.

In fact, in almost ninety percent of the cases, the products can be self certified according to certain CE marking regulations. In simple words, you can do the CE self certification for your product yourself by carrying out the conformity assessment tests yourself. In the time of recession, everyone is looking at different ways for reducing cost and saving money. Eliminating the certification body from the process of CE marking is a great way to save money. Many feel that conformity tests require special education and skills. But this is also a myth. You must remember that it is your product and you have a lot of expertise about your own product than any third party certification body. You just need the right tools for conformity assessment tests.

To do the CE self certification, you need to first understand what all the certification body does to do the CE marking. A certification body first conducts certain conformity tests on the product to check its compliance. It also prepares the technical documentation and sees to it that it supports the product’s compliance sufficiently. Once the certification body is confidant about the product’s conformity, it issues a conformity certificate for that product. But for all this the certification body needs to gather a lot of expertise about the product and its requirements. A certification body has to maintain expertise on many different products, but when you are doing this assessment yourself, and then you need to focus only on your product.  

The certification body will need more time and efforts to understand your product. This problem is eliminated during self certification as you know everything about your product. Therefore, you can concentrate completely on the requirements that are applicable to your product and understand your requirements to get your product CE certified by yourself.