Declaration of Conformity Template: Free Generator

A Declaration of Conformity is meant to be simple: one document, standard fields, a signature. In practice, most of the ones we see are missing at least one required element, or name a signatory with no real connection to the product. That gap matters more than it looks: in a January 2026 EU-wide customs and market surveillance check of over 20,000 toys and small electronics shipped in from outside the EU, more than half failed to meet EU product standards, and 84% of those tested in a lab turned out to be genuinely dangerous. Paperwork is usually the first thing an inspector checks, and a Declaration of Conformity with a field missing or a signatory question mark hanging over it does not survive that check. Here is the field-by-field template, the EU-versus-UKCA differences, and a free tool that fills one in correctly.

The fields a valid Declaration of Conformity must contain

We already covered what a Declaration of Conformity is and who is allowed to sign it in our main guide — if you need that grounding first, start there. This piece is the practical companion: the exact fields, in the order most authorities expect them, and a shortcut to producing one without missing anything.

Every EU model Declaration of Conformity, regardless of which directive or regulation it sits under, follows the same skeleton set out in Annex III of Decision No 768/2008/EC. The table below shows what goes in each field, in the order it normally appears.

Who is actually allowed to sign it is worth checking too: it needs to be someone with genuine oversight of the product's compliance, not an arbitrary employee. Your Europe's guidance on signing a declaration sets out the position in plain terms.

EU DoC vs UKCA declaration: what's different?

A UKCA Declaration of Conformity mirrors the EU structure almost field for field, but two things differ in practice. First, the legislation you cite is the UK statutory instrument equivalent rather than the EU directive, though Great Britain currently still recognises CE marking and the underlying EU standards for most goods, so many manufacturers end up citing both regimes side by side rather than picking one. Second, the declaration has to match the market the shipment is actually going to: a document written for the EU with EU legislation cited does not automatically cover a shipment into Great Britain, even when the product itself hasn't changed at all.

gov.uk sets out the current UKCA documentation requirements, and our UKCA vs CE marking guide covers how the underlying recognition has shifted since Brexit, since it's worth checking before assuming last year's position still holds.

The mistakes that get a Declaration of Conformity rejected on inspection

Most declarations that fail on inspection don't fail because the product is unsafe. They fail because the document doesn't hold up on its own terms. A few patterns come up again and again:

• Citing a marketing phrase like "meets EU safety standards" instead of the actual directive number and dated standard reference
• Describing the product too vaguely to identify which model, batch or revision the declaration actually covers
• Naming a signatory with no real oversight of the product's compliance work, such as a sales contact or an outsourced admin address, rather than someone in engineering or quality
• Forgetting to reissue the declaration after a hardware revision changes which standards actually apply
• Missing the notified body reference where one really was involved in testing

Picture a small hardware team shipping a Bluetooth speaker into both the EU and Great Britain from the same production run. Partway through the year they swap in a new Bluetooth radio module to fix a supply problem, but keep using the old Declaration of Conformity because "it's basically the same product." The new module changes which radio standard actually applies, so the EN reference sitting in the old DoC no longer matches what's inside the box. A market surveillance spot-check, or a marketplace compliance request, would catch that mismatch within minutes, and at that point the declaration isn't just outdated, it's arguably false.

How do you actually create one?

Once you know which legislation and standards apply to your product, filling in the document itself should be the fast part. Our own Declaration of Conformity generator is a free tool built for exactly this: a form that walks through the EU and UK fields in order, then formats a document you can review, print or save as a PDF.

It's worth being honest about what it does and doesn't do. It does not test your product, verify your standards claims, or replace a technical file: it only formats the declaration from what you type in, and everything stays in your browser rather than being sent anywhere. If you already know your directives and standards, it turns a blank-page problem into a five-minute one. If you don't yet, our glossary entry on Declarations of Conformity and the guides linked throughout this piece are a better place to start.

Do you need a technical file as well?

Yes. A Declaration of Conformity is a summary statement, not the evidence behind it. Whatever you cite in the declaration, whether that's test reports, standards applied, or design records, needs to actually exist and be retrievable, bundled together into what's called a technical file.

Our guide to what goes in a technical file covers the structure in full, but the short version is that the declaration and the technical file are a matched pair. The declaration makes the claim; the technical file is what backs it up if a market surveillance authority, or an online marketplace, ever asks to see it.

How long do you need to keep it?

Ten years, in most cases, counted from when the product was placed on the market. That figure is written directly into individual pieces of EU legislation, such as the Radio Equipment Directive, which requires manufacturers to keep the declaration and its supporting technical documentation available to market surveillance authorities for that whole period.

That's longer than most people expect, and long enough that "we'll find it if anyone asks" is not a real plan. A declaration that only exists as a half-remembered file on someone's old laptop does not count as available. Keep a copy alongside the technical file it belongs to, note which product batch or revision it covers, and treat any hardware change as a prompt to check whether it needs reissuing, rather than something to worry about later.

A Declaration of Conformity is not difficult once you know exactly what belongs in it. The difficulty is usually remembering every field, matching the right regime to the right market, and keeping the document in step with the product as it changes. Fill in our free generator if the compliance groundwork behind your product is already done, or start with our requirements checker if you're still working out which rules apply to you first.