CE marking requirements explained: the 20-minute version

CE marking is not a single test, a single certificate, or a single fee. It is a self-declaration: by affixing the CE mark, a manufacturer states that a product meets every piece of EU harmonisation legislation that applies to it, and that the manufacturer holds the evidence to prove it. There is no CE marking "body" that inspects your product and hands you a sticker. You decide which rules apply, do the work the rules require, and put the mark on yourself.

That single sentence is where most of the confusion starts, so it is worth sitting with it. CE marking is not a product category. A phone charger, a toy, a router and a garden light all carry the same two letters, but each is judged against a different stack of legislation with different tests, different documents and different deadlines.

Which legislation actually applies

There is no single "CE Directive". CE marking is required only where a specific EU regulation or directive says so, and each one covers a defined scope. The common ones for hardware are:

• Low Voltage Directive (2014/35/EU), for electrical equipment operating between 50 and 1000V AC (or 75 to 1500V DC): basic electrical safety.
• EMC Directive (2014/30/EU), for anything with a circuit board: it must not emit disruptive interference and must tolerate a reasonable amount of interference from its environment.
• Radio Equipment Directive, RED (2014/53/EU), for anything that transmits or receives radio signals: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LoRa, cellular. RED also carries newer cybersecurity essential requirements for internet-connected and childcare-related radio equipment.
• RoHS (2011/65/EU), restricting lead, mercury, cadmium, certain phthalates and other substances in electrical and electronic equipment.
• Sector-specific rules for toys, machinery, PPE, medical devices and more, each with its own directive or regulation.

A single product is almost always in scope of several of these at once. A Wi-Fi smart plug, for instance, typically sits under RED (it has a radio), RoHS (it is electronic equipment) and, because RED's scope covers the electrical safety and EMC aspects for radio equipment, does not usually also need LVD and EMC separately declared, though the harmonised standards used to demonstrate compliance still address safety and EMC performance. The only reliable way to know your own stack is to check it against your specific product, which is what our free requirements checker does, and to read the underlying regulation guides rather than guess from a competitor's box.

Conformity assessment: who decides you comply

For most electronics, the applicable directives allow "internal production control": the manufacturer tests against the relevant harmonised standards (or has a lab do it), keeps the records, and self-declares. No external body is legally required to sign off.

A notified body becomes mandatory only when the specific legislation says so, typically for higher-risk categories or when a manufacturer chooses not to apply harmonised standards in full and needs a third party to assess an alternative route. When a notified body is involved, its four-digit identification number must appear next to the CE mark.

The technical file and the standards that back it up

Behind every CE mark sits a technical file: the documentation proving the declaration is true. It typically includes a description of the product, design and manufacturing drawings, the list of harmonised standards applied (or a description of the solutions adopted where standards do not fully apply), test reports, risk assessments, and the Declaration of Conformity itself. Authorities can request this file at any time, and it generally needs to be kept for 10 years after the last unit is placed on the market.

Harmonised standards (EN standards published in the Official Journal against a specific directive) are not legally mandatory to use, but using them creates a "presumption of conformity": if you meet the standard, you are presumed to meet the underlying legal requirement. Deviating from the standards is legal, but the burden of proving compliance by another route falls entirely on you, which is why almost nobody does it for consumer electronics.

Declaring, then marking

Once the technical file is complete, the manufacturer signs a Declaration of Conformity naming every directive or regulation the product complies with, listing the standards used, and identifying who takes responsibility. The DoC does not usually ship in the box, but a copy (physical or a link on the packaging or product) generally has to be made available. Our Declaration of Conformity guide covers exactly what has to go in it, and the free generator formats one from your inputs in a couple of minutes.

The CE mark itself has specific rules: minimum height of 5mm, proportions fixed by the official design, and it has to be affixed to the product itself wherever physically possible, or to packaging and accompanying documents only when the product is too small or its nature does not allow it.

What if none of the CE directives apply

Plenty of products (a wooden phone stand, a cotton tote bag, a candle) fall outside every CE directive. That does not mean no rules apply. The General Product Safety Regulation ((EU) 2023/988, applicable since 13 December 2024) is the backstop: it requires any consumer product placed on the EU market to be safe, whether or not sector legislation exists, and adds specific duties for products sold online, including a requirement for a responsible economic operator established in the EU for products without one already. We cover this in detail in GPSR for online sellers.

The one honest caveat

None of this is a substitute for reading the actual legal text for your product category, and for higher-risk products (medical, machinery with genuine safety exposure, anything you are unsure about) it is worth paying a notified body or compliance consultant for a second opinion before you ship. What we can do reliably is map your product to the rules that apply and link you straight to the primary source for each one, which is exactly what the requirements checker is for.