CE Marking of Military Equipment: It is the Law! How to do it?

Several European Union Members States exempted the implementation of the EMC Directive for defence contracts. According the lawyers, and validated in a court case, this is illegal, and thus the EMC Directive is applicable for military equipment too, except when an exemption for a clearly defined case has been granted. The European Commission confirmed this conclusion in an interpretative communication. The EMC Directive only gives essential requirements. The default route, giving presumption of conformity, is making use of harmonized standards. The alternative route is the use of standards which have not been harmonised. Military standards are not harmonised, and are already in use as the reference in contracts between supplier and customer/user. Using the (test) evidence based on the military standards can therefore be used to prove compliance with the essential requirements of the EMC Directive, making additional testing superfluous. This paper describes the routes to compliance for military equipment.