CE Marking & UKCA Marking Compliance for Electrical Cables

CE Marking denotes that a product has been proven to meet European legislation on health, safety and environmental compliance, and facilitates free trade across the European market. Regardless of manufacturing origin, manufacturers are required to attest to compliance if the goods are sold within the EU.

Whilst CE marking is mandatory for cables, it has become normal practice to place these markings on the paperwork accompanying the products rather than on the cables themselves. The CE mark is stipulated to be 5mm in height - a dimension not always possible on smaller cross-sectional cables. 

The Construction Products Regulation (CPR) has further endorsed this in mandated standard EN 50575, specifying in the legal Annex that the CE marking shall be on the product labels and not the product itself. Importantly, this also avoids it being mistaken for a third-party quality approval mark.

For the avoidance of doubt, Article 17 of the Low Voltage Directive (LVD) 2006 states:
"The CE marking shall be affixed visibly, legibly and indelibly to the electrical equipment or to its data plate. Where this is not possible or not warranted on account of the nature of the electrical equipment, it shall be affixed to the packaging and to the accompanying documents."

Under RoHS 3 (EU 2015/863) compliance with the RoHS Directive is now part of the requirements of CE Marking.