Commission Directive 2012/4/EU

of 22 February 2012

amending Directive 2008/43/EC setting up, pursuant to Council Directive 93/15/EEC, a system for the identification and traceability of explosives for civil uses

(Text with EEA relevance)

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Council Directive 93/15/EEC of 5 April 1993 on the harmonisation of the provisions relating to the placing on the market and supervision of explosives for civil uses1, and in particular the second sentence of the second paragraph of Article 14 thereof,

Whereas:

(1)

Fuses, including safety fuses as well as cap-type primers, are subject to Directive 93/15/EEC, but they are used for pyrotechnic rather than for explosive purposes. The potential effects of their misuse are likely to be similar to the effects of misuse of pyrotechnic articles which present a low level of hazard and therefore those effects are much less severe in comparison with the other types of explosives. For reasons of proportionality, fuses, including safety fuses as well as cap-type primers, should be exempted from the system for the identification and traceability of explosives for civil use.

(2)
The development of the computerised systems needed to implement the system for the identification and traceability of explosives has taken longer than initially expected. A postponement of the application of Commission Directive 2008/43/EC2 is necessary to provide the explosives industry with extra time to fully develop, test, validate and, thereby, to increase the security of the electronic systems required to implement Directive 2008/43/EC. In order to allow this, the obligation on manufacturers and importers to mark explosives should be postponed by 1 year to 5 April 2013. Additional time is necessary to have the requisite electronic tracking systems implemented by all actors along the supply chain. Furthermore, stocks of explosives with longer shelf-lives which were produced earlier and were not to be marked in accordance with Directive 2008/43/EC will still be in the supply chain and it is impractical to oblige companies to maintain different types of records. The obligations on data collection and record keeping should therefore be postponed by 3 years to 5 April 2015.
(3)

Certain articles are too small to affix the code of the manufacturing site and the electronically readable information. On certain other articles, affixing a unique identification is technically impossible due to their shape or design. In those cases, the required identification should be affixed on each smallest packaging unit. Future technical progress may make it possible to affix the code of the manufacturing site and the electronically readable information on those articles. The Commission should therefore carry out a review by the end of 2020 to assess whether the required information can be affixed on the articles themselves.

(4)

Directive 2008/43/EC should therefore be amended accordingly.

(5)

The measures provided for in this Directive are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee established by Article 13(1) of Directive 93/15/EC,

HAS ADOPTED THIS DIRECTIVE: