RoHS will come into force<br>this weekend in the UK

The WEEE deadline has been moved and many companies may hope that the same will go for the RoHS deadline but according to the UK government the RoHS directive will come into force on July 1. Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked: "Whether, in the light of new evidence, they will make representations to the European Commission to repeal the hazardous waste directive, which bans the use of lead and five other metals [sic] in electronic products and comes into force on 1 July; and whether they will delay its implementation in the United Kingdom pending an examination of the effects on British industry, including any financial effects." "Being a single market directive, the U.K. could not delay the implementation of the restriction of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment directive without serious threat to the functioning of the free movement of goods across the European Union", Lord Sainsbury, Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the DTI answered. The authority that is responsible for the law enforcement of the RoHS directive in UK, National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML), doesn´t want to communicate its enforcement strategy. However according to electronicsweekly the NWML will be allowed to do some investigations with a hand-held XRF (X-ray fluorescence) analyzer, without first having to wait for documentary evidence. "Member State enforcement authorities must, in the first instance, decide which electrical and electronic equipment categories and products they wish to select for further investigation," electronicsweekly quoted from the European RoHS guidelines. "These decisions will be made following market surveillance activities and could involve one or more of the following criteria: market intelligence, random selection; products known to contain materials of high concern, high volume products, short life products, consumer products unlikely to be recycled, notification of concern from external parties, notification of concern from other Member States", say the guidelines.