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Drinking water directive: "The last 12 months have shown several signs that things are moving"

Wednesday 26 July 2017

National laws on products in contact with drinking water is a concern for the European taps and valves industry, but the last 12 months have shown several signs that the long expected harmonisation is about to happen. Last summer, an evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive has been published, followed by a commission roadmap and an impact analysis early 2017. This clarified the need to work on the article 10 that today simply asks member states to develop regulations on materials in contact with drinking water. In addition the commission ordered another study specifically on this topic. The conclusion published this year are very clear:  to achieve a true single market for these product, a new regulatory framework has to be developed. Other policy options can be considered that can achieve mutual recognition or partial harmonisation, interesting and probably useful short term intermediate steps if we do not forget the long term objective of a single market.

The Construction Product Regulation contains one essential requirement about the release of substances in the drinking water. However, the standardisation mandate 136, issued initially in 2001, has permit to develop some test standard, but not yet the necessary product standards that would be necessary for harmonisation. Proposals of replacement of Mandate 136 have been issued at the end of 2016 and may allow CEN to continue its standardisation work, but anyway, for several reasons CPR is maybe not the most appropriate way to create the expected simple market for taps and valves.

Hopefully, in parallel to this work activity in Brussels, Member States are not only developing and amending their national regulation independently resulting in more barriers to trade. There are also initiatives that could lead to mutual recognition between a few countries. This is for example the case of the 4MS that continue to publish new documents even if the transposition in national regulations can be very slow. CEIR supports this project and especially the work that is about to start on “minor products”. CEIR is particular please to see that the industry is invited to participate to this work. As member of the consortium “European Drinking Water”, CEIR will make proposals so that future  national requirements, and hopefully  future European legislation tend to a reasonable scheme for assemble products. Each tap and each valve contain a number small parts made of various material for which an adapted level of requirement should be adopted in order to limit compliance costs and allow innovation.

This topic has been discussed for long time and the failure of European Acceptance Scheme a few years ago shows that the ongoing process will not be easy and probably last long. But we can also a strong motivation to find compromises and move forward on the industry side: CEIR, national associations, member company share this willingness with other sector in this new European Drinking Water Consortium.

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