Comments Off on LEVA-EU Briefing on Battery Passport & Machinery Regulation Available
Early next year, every single battery in electric bicycles or e-scooters will have to be accompanied by a Battery Passport.Furthermore, the Machinery Regulation will definitely replace the Machinery Directive. With that, EN 15194:2017+A1:2023 will loose its harmonisation.
LEVA-EU addresses these two major legal changes in a dedicated Briefing on the future legislation. In that briefing you will also find LEVA-EU’s vision for future European technical legislation for Light Electric Vehicles.
This Briefing is free for LEVA-EU members. Companies that are not members of LEVA-EU can obtain the Briefing at the price of €195 (ex VAT).
To order the Briefing, send an email to annick@leva-eu.com with the full name and address of your company as well as your VAT number. We will send you an invoice, and upon receipt of payment, we will send you the Briefing.
If your company joins LEVA-EU within three months after the Info Meeting, that amount will be deducted from the LEVA-EU membership fee.
Comments Off on LEVA-EU at Eurobike 2026: Visit Our Booth, Book a Free Regulatory Check-up and Join Our Info-Meeting
Eurobike remains the only truly international trade show in Europe that brings our entire sector together. LEVA-EU has pledged its full support to the show, and as always we will be present at the 2026 edition — with a booth, free one-to-one regulatory check-ups, and our traditional Info-Meeting. Here is everything you need to know, in one place.
Find us at our booth F50 in Hall 12
Our stand is a quiet meeting place for companies that want to learn more about what LEVA-EU can do for them. We help companies understand and correctly apply European technical regulations — such as the Machinery Regulation and the Battery Regulation — and clarify how standards like EN 15194 and the EN 17860 series relate to legislation.
LEVA-EU members are, of course, most welcome too. Anyone without their own stand can use ours as a meeting point for appointments, or simply drop by with specific questions on regulations and standards.
New this year: a free, 15-minute Regulatory & Compliance Check-up with LEVA-EU’s experts. In the LEV sector, classification is the foundation — a single misjudgement about which legal category your vehicle belongs to can send you down the wrong type-approval route, the wrong standards and the wrong obligations, and that is rarely cheap to fix once it surfaces.
In 15 focused minutes you will get straight answers to the questions that decide everything downstream:
Which legal category does your vehicle actually fall into?
What legislation applies as a result?
Which standards come into play?
Working with components rather than complete vehicles? We will do the same assessment for your components. No cost, no paperwork, no obligation — just a clear, expert snapshot of where you stand, and where potential gaps may be hiding.
The check-up is a genuinely useful starting point. The complete picture — in-depth guidance tailored to your products, ongoing regulatory monitoring, early warning on what is coming, and a partner who advocates for you in Brussels — is what LEVA-EU membership delivers.
LEVA-EU Info-Meeting
On Thursday at lunchtime, our traditional LEVA-EU Info-Meeting takes place. In this exclusive session we will explain:
The implementation of the Battery Regulation, with a special focus on the Battery Passport.
The possible development of a new European legal framework for all light electric vehicles, including electric bikes, electric cargo bikes, speed pedelecs, e-scooters and more.
The new Machinery Regulation, which applies from 20 January 2027 and will have a major effect on EN 15194 for EPACs.
Date: Thursday 25 June 2026 Time: 12:00 to 14:00 Location: Meeting Room Symmetrie 2, Hall 8.1
This is a lunch meeting, with sandwiches and hot and cold beverages provided.
LEVA-EU members participate free of charge but are asked to register. Non-members pay admission:
Media: members of the press are welcome to participate for free. Contact info@leva-eu.com with your press credentials.
LEVA-EU is the voice of the LEV sector — and increasingly, its trusted regulatory partner. Come find out what that means for your business. We look forward to welcoming you in Hall 12.
Comments Off on LEVA-EU Info-Meeting at Eurobike: Battery Regulation & New Machinery Regulation
During Eurobike, LEVA-EU invites you to an exclusive session where we will explain the following issues:
The implementation of the Battery Regulation with a special focus on the Battery Passport.
We will also clarify the new Machinery Regulation, which applies from 20 January 2027 and will have a major effect on the EN 15194 for EPACs.
Finally, we will update you on the possible development of a new European legal framework for all light electric vehicles, including electric bikes, electric cargo bikes, speed pedelecs, e-scooters, etc.
The meeting will take place in the same room as last year:
Date: Thursday 25 June 2026 – Time: 12:00 to 14:00 – Location: Meeting Room Symmetrie 2, Hall 8.1.
Comments Off on UK Government Extends CE Mark Recognition
During the summer holidays, the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has announced an indefinite extension of the use of CE marking for businesses in the whole of the UK.
CE marking, which signifies conformity with European technical legislation, will continue to be allowed alongside the UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) mark. Originally the idea was to abolish CE marking and replace it completely with UKCA in Great-Britain. For Northern-Ireland, the plan was always to maintain CE marking only.
The extension of the validity of the CE marking comes after extensive consultations with industry stakeholders, addressing their concerns and aligning with their growth objectives. By allowing businesses to continue using CE marking, the government allegedly aims to provide them with the clarity needed to focus on innovation and expansion, rather than navigating regulatory complexities. The extension should provide businesses with flexibility and choice to use either the UKCA or CE approach to sell products in Great Britain.
However, it’s unclear what the effect will be once the legislation behind the respective marks will start to deviate from each other. The best example is the replacement of the Machinery Directive by the Machinery Regulation. As of end December 2026, in the EU the current Directive will be replaced by a Regulation with a number of new and amended requirements. The UK will not implement the new Machinery Regulation but will stay with the Machinery Directive. Consequently, the CE marking and the UKCA marking will stand for two different things. Since the UKCA marking will not cover the additional and amended requirements of the new Regulation, it may then be attractive to opt for the UKCA marking for the Brittish market. As times moves on, the CE and UKCA markings will only grow further apart.
Another issue relates to the fact that the UK continues its participation in European standards. If standards get harmonized under the new Machinery Regulation, this harmonization will have no legal value in the UK, which will not implement that Regulation. All these are difficult questions which the current government has clearly decided to pass on to their successors.
Comments Off on New Machinery Regulation: adverse effects on Light Electric Vehicles Business
End of last year, the European Parliament, Council and Commission reached an agreement on the future Machinery Regulation. Parliament and Council went against the Commission’s proposal to exclude all vehicles from the future legislation. That will have particularly adverse effects on electric cycles, e-scooters and self-balancing vehicles.
Originally, the Commission proposed to exclude all “vehicles which have as their only objective the transport of goods or persons by road, air, water of rail (…).” The justification was that Machinery legislation was “not meant to regulate risks other than those stemming from the machinery function (such as sawing, excavating, etc.) and not the risks exclusively relating to its transport function of persons or goods.” If they had been excluded, they would have come under the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD), just like conventional cycles. More importantly, this would only have been a temporary solution in anticipation of a specific Regulation for Light Electric Vehicles.
Unnecessary Machinery Directive
The intermediate solution of the GPSD would have been so much better for LEVs because this Directive only has very general requirements. In addition, there are already several European standards with specific technical safety requirements in place, i.e. the EN 15194 for EPACs, the EN 17128 for PLEVs (e-scooters & self-balancing vehicles) and the EN 17404 for EPAC mountain bikes. The fact that these vehicles present no structural safety risks shows that the standards offer adequate technical requirements and that the Machinery Directive is unnecessary to ensure that safety.
On the contrary, in recent years, in standardisation it has become increasingly clear how much the current Machinery Directive is an obstacle to Light Electric Vehicles (LEVs). The Directive contains hazards that are totally irrelevant to LEVs, for instance noise, vibrations or protection against risks from moving parts.
HAS consultants
Originally, there were in-house CEN consultants, who worked together with the technical committees to ensure that the draft standards met the requirements of the Machinery Directive in the best possible way to maximize the chances of harmonization. The harmonization of standards under the Machinery Directive offers manufacturers presumption of conformity in case of a dispute, or worse, a court-case. This presumption of conformity is an important guarantee of legal certainty.
With these in-house consultants, there was room to negotiate which requirements were relevant or not. One very important agreement for the EN 15194 (EPACs) for instance was that the requirements for moving parts were not relevant for cycle wheels. Without that agreement, the standard would have required all wheels to be covered.
Since, the Commission has changed the system. They replaced the in-house consultants by so-called Harmonised Standards (HAS) consultants. The contract was outsourced to a private company, i.e. Ernst & Young. The task of these consultants is to support the Commission to verify whether the requirements for harmonisation are met. However, HAS consultants are no longer involved in the actual drafting processes and therefore technical committees can no longer make use of HAS consultants services to fill any potential gaps in the technical or legal expertise, nor to negotiate.
Harmonisation impossible
What’s worse for LEVs, HAS consultants make all Machinery Directive requirements applicable to LEVs, whether relevant are not. As a result, in the new system none of the LEV- standards has achieved harmonisation. To this end, nonsensical tests should be introduced such as on the noise level the vehicles produce or on vibrations, which for LEVs obviously come from the road surface not from the vehicle itself. As for the future standards for electric cargocycles, it is already clear that no harmonisation will be requested because it is simply not feasible.
The new Machinery Regulation will only exacerbate these issues. Indeed, the new legal text will now explicitly state that the Regulation applies only to risks arising from the machinery function, not the transport function. However, who will determine what is a machinery function and what is a transport function? In our view, LEVs don’t have machinery functions, only transport functions. That is exactly why the Commission thought it necessary to exclude them. Unfortunately, the European Parliament and Council literally twisted the Commission’s words, the result being an unworkable mess.
Disastrous impact
One party that argued hard to keep LEVs, more specifically electric bikes, in the new legal text was CONEBI, the trade association for the (electric) bike industry. We quote from their position paper: “The EU Machinery Directive is of high importance to the EU Bicycle Industry as it legislates the essential health and safety requirements relating to the design and construction of electrically power assisted cycles (EPACs).The fact that EPACs are within the scope of the Machinery Directive was officially acknowledged in the first Edition of the Guide to Application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC of December 2009.”
CONEBI clearly does not question the adequacy of the essential health and safety machinery requirements for EPACs. Also, the CONEBI memory is somewhat lacking here. in 2006, yours truly and a representative of CONEBI (called COLIBI at that time) had a meeting with the Commission to ask if there was still any chance of avoiding the Machinery Directive for electric bicycles excluded from type-approval. In other words, originally CONEBI was not in favour of having electric bikes in the Machinery Directive. Their current efforts to keep EPACs in the new Machinery Regulation clearly shows that the association has no understanding of the impact on standardisation for EPACs AND for other light, electric vehicles, nor of the consequences for the businesses concerned. Hopefully their understanding will grow as the disastrous impact of the new legislation on LEVs becomes a reality. In the meantime, LEVA-EU will continue its efforts for a specific LEV-Regulation designed in consultation with the LEV-business for the LEV-business.