Assessing the review process of EU Ecodesign regulations

The EU Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Directives set regulations on the energy efficiency, environmental, and information requirements of energy related products entering the EU market. Each individual product regulation stipulates that the EU Commission must undertake a review after a certain number of years. This review stage is crucial to improve the effectiveness and ambition of regulations, and also presents an opportunity to include new resource efficiency aspects. The strength of a review depends on the review process, which has followed various approaches in each reviewed product group so far. This article aims to summarise and discuss these varying review processes and identify their differences and shortcomings. The analysis is based on comparing the review processes to the standard Methodology for Ecodesign of Energy related Products (MEErP) used in preparatory studies to develop new Ecodesign regulations. Analysis questions were discussed with a small number of experts to gain deeper insights on opportunities and difficulties; suggestions are made for improving future review processes. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.