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It all began in 1989
when the EU passed the Electromagnetic Compatibility Directive
89/336. In order to
understand the purpose of this Directive, I believe it is helpful to
think about it as being similar to the U.S. Constitution.
For example, the Constitution enables the U.S. government to
enact laws, just as the EMC Directive enables the EU to enact
technical regulations or standards.
The directive’s main objective is to harmonize the various
member nation standards of the European Union in order to ease the
flow of trade. Simply
put, the directive establishes levels of EM protection requirements,
leaving it up to European harmonized standards to define those
technical requirements. This
Directive was implemented on January 1, 1996 after a five year grace
period.
A direct result of the EMC Directive was the EU establishment
of the low frequency emissions technical regulation European Norm
(EN) 61000-3-2 in 1995. However,
EN 61000-3-2 did not take affect on January 1, 1996, as the other
harmonized standards did. Since
this standard was published in 1995, the EU decided that a
transition time was need and postponed the implementation date to
June 6, 1998. Then
shortly before the 1998 implementation date, the European Commission
again postponed implementation until January 1, 2001.
This is why this is an urgent meeting.
This standard was originally developed within the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which is the world
organization for preparing and publishing international standards
for all electrical, electronic and related technologies.
The IEC is a member driven organization with a membership of
over 50 nations, including the U.S. and the individual nations of
the European Union.
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