Personal protective equipment, like masks, is required to be CE certified before it can be sold on the European market — as it should be! Faulty products can kill you. All of these products have to adhere to “Regulation (EU) 2016/425”https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/mechanical-engineering/personal-protective-equipment_en …
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The Nando database helpful lists which EU-based certification organizations are accredited for certifying products under “Regulation (EU) 2016/425” and you will see that ECM, ICR and Celab are not on it. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/nando/index.cfm?fuseaction=directive.notifiedbody&dir_id=155501 …
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And then a couple of days ago, ICR Polska all of the sudden put a warning message on top of all their webpages saying that “assessments carried out so far are of a voluntary nature” and “these certificates do not confirm conformity.” It seems like something spooked them.pic.twitter.com/0ulQt5YDVG
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So I started digging into what ICR meant by “voluntary nature” and I can tell you now: It’s not pretty.
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Turns out these companies have two business lines:
Actual regulatory certification
Fake certificates as marketing documents
Both of those look official, come with the same branding, and pass the document validation check.
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These certification organizations will sell fake certificates as “voluntary certification” which only has to live up to the certifier’s standards, not the regulatory ones. Manufactures can essential buy the branding of a legitimate certification organization for marketing.
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ECM calls this their “Voluntary Mark for Product Certification” and helpfully describes it as: “The Mark may only be used for advertising and promotional purposes and can not in any way refer to the product's compliance with regulations.” http://www.entecerma-it.cn/img/pdf/ECM-Mark-Regulation.pdf …pic.twitter.com/2xISQmdAox
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Celab is even more straightforward and says “the voluntary certificate is not for customs purposes or to demonstrate to the supervisory compliance with the requirements of the CE marking of a product.” https://celab.com/en/ce-marking/voluntary-certificate/ …pic.twitter.com/CFqeUfxU4X
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However, the real and the fake certificates both look official, come with the same logos, and show up in the same verification system. The only difference is that you have to carefully determine whether it’s a “voluntary one.”pic.twitter.com/JaC05xORrD
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Replying to @thijsniks
This should be stopped immediately, this is very misleading. Who would notice that this is a bullshit certificate?
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These documents are very tricky. The big “certificate of compliance” (instead of “certificate of conformity”), ECM logo, and CE-mark are all there to make it seem like this is an official and legitimate CE-certificate.
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Replying to @thijsniks
They refer to the relevant EU Directive and Standards! The average procurement guy will not notice.
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