Technical Criteria for CE (TW4)

Guidelines for issuing Certificates of Constancy of Performance

The placing on the market of a restraint device is now subject to the issuance of a Certificate of Constancy of Performance, issued by a Notified Body recognized by the European Commission, which are required to be accredited under EN 17065. The spirit of certification is to allow products to be placed on the European market that all meet the same technical directives. But do the more than 50 Notified Bodies in Europe operate with essentially similar criteria? And do they have the appropriate expertise to untangle the complex regulatory and technical landscape for restraint devices? Are the reference standards and Position Papers interpreted in a substantially equivalent manner? And are product modifications, which are in high demand because of the high cost of testing, handled with shared technical criteria that ensure that they do not actually affect device performance?

If this were not the case, as in fact it is not, products placed on the market cannot be considered equivalent but would depend on the criteria adopted by the Notified Body, to the detriment of safety.
From an in-depth study of the technical standards and Positio Papers issued by CEN, Intoroads is preparing a guideline, to be shared with the main European Notified Bodies, that analyzes all aspects of certification and provides industry operators with an unambiguous reference document that limits, especially from a technical point of view, excessive deviations from the current standards of the different Notified Bodies and the deviations, in order to place on the European market products that meet essentially the same criteria and can guarantee the highest safety standards currently possible.