Costly new year for assemblers

It is only a matter of time until the first PC assembler is busted for flouting EC regulations on electromagnetic compliance.

The stay of execution is partly due to a delay in implementation of the CE Directive following an agreement by EU member states for a 12-month period of "administrative tolerance" beyond the official deadline set for 1 January this year.

For the remainder of 1996 at least, the law enforcers should be taking a relaxed view of any complaints received about non-complying independent assemblers. "Now is the time for those companies to close the gap with the larger firms. We urge them to take full advantage of the current situation while it lasts," said a spokesman at the DTI.

But the larger manufacturers and assemblers that have ploughed profits into testing labs aren't nearly so tolerant.

The pressure for action is not coming from the PC giants like IBM, Compaq and Packard Bell. For companies with billion dollar turnovers, ensuring EMC compliance is a drop in the ocean. They can afford to install their own test facilities, allowing them to put the CE mark on their PCs almost immediately.

It's the medium-sized off-the-pagers that are baying for the independents' blood. In a recent letter to Richard Page MP, Minister for Small Business, the trade body PCA (Personal Computer Association), which represents companies like Viglen and Evesham Micro, called on the government to seek out and punish smaller companies not complying with EMC regulations. The letter reads: "Many of our members have found the EMC regulations particularly onerous and all of them have found them a costly and worrying nuisance ... What we believe we are now seeing is that many companies, especially smaller ones, are not bothering to comply and are thereby gaining a commercial advantage."

In fact companies like Viglen stand to make money out of independents panicking in the face of three months in prison and a u5,000 fine. For a price, the Amstrad-owned manufacturer will hire out its testing labs.

But according to a senior trading standards officer CE regulations at present are unenforceable. "We have had enough of the light touch enforcement approach," said Ron Gainsford, assistant chief executive of the Local Authorities Co-ordinating Body on Food and Trading Standards (Lacots). "When a new piece of legislation comes out, what resources will the DTI throw into it? If the Government wants enforcement, that needs resources. You can't expect to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

I challenge the Government to respond."

The Eurocrats in Brussels also need to establish some kind of standardisation.

"In the UK, everything's allowed until it's forbidden. In Germany, everything's forbidden until it's allowed. In Italy, everything's allowed. The whole bloody thing's crackers," said Gainsford.