A review of the range of EU Member State activity related to compliance with the EU Energy Label regulations
14/05/2007
Compulsory energy labelling of EU domestic appliance began in 1995. Since then it has been a successful tool in bringing forward more energy efficient domestic appliances for the products it covers. However, a number of stakeholders, including governments and industry, have raised concerns that relatively little compliance monitoring of Energy Labelling regulations takes place within the EU. In 2006 Defra MTP co-funded a review project with ANEC [1] to demonstrate whether this was the case, and what barriers needed to be overcome to improve the current situation.
The review was based on interviews with 11 governmental bodies in nine Member States, six consumer organisations in six Member States and information from the CEECAP project (reviewing the newer Member States).
The main findings:
- All Member States reported at least 20 to 30% unlabelled appliances in shops, with worse rates in some of the newer Member States.
- Only six of the nine Member States questioned test appliances for monitoring purposes and only two test groups of appliances and report them centrally.
- A large proportion of tested appliances only meet the claims on their labels because of a 15% tolerance on the measured energy consumption is allowed by the test standards.
The main barriers to compliance monitoring:
- Low priority is given by governments and energy authorities
- Test costs are too high
- Low enforcement of sanctions in cases of non-compliance
- Lack of co-ordination and information sharing between and within the Member States
The study makes a number of recommendations:
- The European Commission should require Member States to undertake a minimum number of label display inspections, to test a minimum number of appliances and to proactively inform consumers about Energy Labels.
- Member States should increase co-operation and information sharing – sharing test reports, dialogue with manufacturers, co-ordinate tests and enforcement actions, use common test laboratories to reduce costs.
- The European Commission and the standards bodies should update the Directives and technical standards to reduce or remove the tolerances; base the standards on consumer behaviour, and reduce complexity of the test standard.
The study is published on the MTP web site – link here.
[1] European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation