Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Ordinance (“Elektroaltgeräteverordnung”)

It is prohibited to place electrical and electronic equipment on the market that contains more than 0.1 percent by weight of lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE), di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP) or diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP) per homogeneous material or more than 0.01 percent by weight of cadmium per homogeneous material.

This also applies to cables and spare parts for repair, reuse, the updating of functions and the expansion of performance capabilities.

This ban on certain heavy metals and substances when placing appliances on the market for the first time within the European Union implements Directive 2011/65/EU on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (RoHS Directive).

Exceptions to the ban

Certain devices

The following devices do not fall within the scope of the RoHS provisions (Section (4b) of the (Austrian) Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Ordinance (“Elektroaltgeräteverordnung”, abbreviation “EAG-VO”)):

1. Equipment for use in space,
2. stationary large industrial tools,
3. large-scale fixed installations,
4. means of transport for the carriage of passengers or goods with the exception of electric two-wheeled vehicles that are not type-approved,
5. mobile machines with their own power supply or with external drive via mains cable which are not intended for road traffic and which must either be mobile during operation or must be moved continuously or semi-continuously to different fixed operating locations and are made available exclusively for professional use,
6. active implantable medical devices,
7. photovoltaic modules to be used in a system designed, assembled and installed by specialised personnel for permanent operation in a specific location to generate energy from sunlight for public, commercial, industrial and residential applications,
8. devices designed exclusively for research and development purposes and made available only on an inter-company basis,
9. appliances which are specifically designed as part of another electrical or electronic equipment exempted from this Ordinance or of an appliance according to points 1 through 8 and are to be installed as such a part, which can only fulfil their function as part of this appliance and which can only be replaced by identical, specifically designed appliances,
10. pipe organs.

Exemptions for specific applications

In its Annexes III (general applications) and IV (applications specific to medical devices and monitoring and control instruments) the RoHS Directive lists applications that are exempted from the restrictions.

Section 4 para. (2) of the EAG-VO refers directly to these Annexes of the RoHS Directive and stipulates that these Annexes also apply to Austria in their current version.

The current version of the RoHS Directive, including Annexes III and IV, is available on the EURO-Lex page.

Transitional provisions

For all categories of electrical and electronic equipment set out in Annex I to Directive 2011/65/EU, the prerequisites for the exemption of reused spare parts removed from electrical and electronic equipment should be clearly defined.

As exemptions from the restriction on the use of certain hazardous substances should be of limited duration, the maximum duration of existing exemptions should equally be clearly defined for all categories of electrical and electronic equipment, including those in category 11 (equipment that could not be assigned to any of the previous 10 categories).

The prerequisite should be that reuse takes place in a verifiable closed inter-company system and that consumers are informed that spare parts have been reused.

Further temporary exemptions of certain substances applied to devices placed on the market before specific dates (most recently before 22 July 2021) and can be found in detail in Section 4 paragraphs (1a) through (1d) and (2) of the EAG-VO.