Overview of RoHS 2.0 and status of exemptions

After four years of discussion, on 1 July 2012, the new European RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU (RoHS 2.0) was officially published and entered into force on 21 July 2012. Fraunhofer IZM together with Öko-Institute in Freiburg, Germany, has evaluated the RoHS exemptions and exemption requests for the European Commission since 2005 and is thus familiar with the regulations of the RoHS Directive. The recast RoHS overall brings considerable improvements for the producers of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), but also new obligations and more stringent measures for compliance monitoring. This paper describes and explains the most important changes for producers. Producers benefit from new stipulations for exemptions and will be given more guidance for how to achieve RoHS compliance and how to apply for exemptions. But RoHS 2.0 also extends its scope to almost all EEE and requires more efforts from producers and member states to prove and monitor RoHS-compliance.