Talk:CE marking

China Export Mark
Who removed the China Export Mark diagram showing it's differnece with the CE mark? Somebody has removed this section of the article with no discussion. I've put another picture at the bottom. No doubt the Chinese will delete it again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.130.123.157 (talk) 10:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The reference list contains links to a commercial website (www.cemarking.org) that sells the texts of directives(!). This is bad, because these texts are published by the EU free of charge. Please remove them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hazu123 (talk • contribs) 11:15, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

A quick sanity check around my household shows the "Chinese" version of the CE mark on several items that are unlikely top be fake and do not appear to originate from China. The EU sais that there is no relation between malformed CE labels and fraudulent labeling. Is there any hard evidence that this is not true? It seems to me that the "Chine Export" symbol stuff is an urban legend. Of four sources cited in the article, two are dead links, one is a youtube video and on is The Inquirer.

This, I strongly suggest to label this as a "rumor", not state it as fact. -- Duesentrieb-formerly-Gearloose (?!) 18:57, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Addendum: the cited youtube video shows the "bad" logo as an example of "correct" labeling at 0:32.

Sure, there are "grey" imports with false labels, many of them come from china. But I think many legit products also bare the "terse" version of the CE logo. And I don't buy anyone would go through the trouble of creating a phone CE trademark for "China Exports". Rip-Off companies will put any label on their stuff, why go through the trouble making a slightly different label if you can just slap on the real thing? -- Duesentrieb-formerly-Gearloose (?!) 19:56, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Domestically, sure, you can buy even worse products; although, the mark's ubiquity night make it easier to doubt whether the product is certified. ["terse" isn't the word, unless this can be proven out to be a succinct issue, the word 'crude', is more like it] Also, China does have proper designers/government regulators/watch dogs for exports (i'm remembering the suloution to the recent overgrowth of algal blooms on the coast) Even if they only know Engrish-level marketing, the economy is regulated "niche by niche" from the top down. too-- not only illicit counterfeiters/forgeries. Some brands of E-cigs are imported from China, some of the 'decent' ones certifiably compliant/economically sound, with a CE endorsement (manufacture in China... Just as well, some of the the stripped down alternative products, are comparable, to domestic goods   24.246.236.191 (talk) 03:12, 26 May 2015 (UTC) --L. Tischmann (talk)

I agree that this whole section is an urban legend. I'm a compliance engineer, and 99% of the time I have seen this so called "China Export" mark, it was put on by a manufacturer who simply didn't know the ratio and spacing requirements for a legitimately earned CE mark. All the references seem extremely vague and not particularly authoritative. This section is perpetuating a myth. --Stephend01 (talk) 00:15, 14 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I think it is okay for Wikipedia to have information on myths, as long as they are "notable" enough and not presented as facts. I actually had a go at rewording it and removed some of the dodgier references the other day. I still wonder about that “difference between European and Chinese” picture. Where did it come from? At least it should be reworded. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 02:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC).


 * The picture should go, it's misleading at best. Even the description in the image page should be changed.
 * I agree that it's ok for Wikipedia to have info on urban legends, but it's not ok to perpetuate them. The section should clearly state that this is a popular but apparently unfounded claim. -- Duesentrieb-formerly-Gearloose (?!) 19:29, 14 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Only now saw your changes. Much better, thanks. Removed the picture, though, since it contains the misleading "Chinese Export" label. -- Duesentrieb-formerly-Gearloose (?!) 19:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The China Export is a joke on the CE mark made by european engineers, who have actually been through CE testing of their products in euro labs and know how rigorous it is. Seeing the poorly made CE marked stuff, verified in China, that would never pass an euro lab test is why the China Export joke came about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.212.30.177 (talk) 17:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

The European Parliament also believes it's an urban legend: P-5938/07 --Hectorct (talk) 11:22, 15 April 2018 (UTC)


 * has the official statement from the Commission. It is a hoax. And in other news, fraudsters exist, shock.--𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Change name of the article
As per offical EU website the term to be used is "CE marking" and not "CE mark" Chetankathalay (talk) 06:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is so per the website you mention. Regrettably, however, "CE marking" is a mistranslation of "marquage CE" and causes confusion. The correct translation is "CE mark", which is obvious once one realises that what is wrongly called "CE marking" is in fact nothing more than the two letters CE. English speakers would call this is a "mark", not "marking" or "a marking". "Marking" wrongly suggests to everyone who comes across the term that there is some sort of system or collection of CE marks or CE information that a manufacturer puts on his products. I oppose the idea that when a text is mistranslated - even when the powers that be hand it down as the official and legal text without first getting it properly checked - we should perpetuate its mistranslations. We are meant to promote understanding, not confusion. EU documents are stiff with ugly malformities of language owing to hasty half-translations and mis-translations that often get inserted into legal documents. (The expression "acquis communautaire" is another mistranslation and an offensive eyesore to everyone who knows French and English.) I say that even if an EU law uses English wrongly, we must when discussing or applying that law use correct language, especially where (as in the CE mark case) the correct name is so close to the incorrect official one that anyone referring to the mistranslated legal source can see what has happened. The only time it would be right to use the incorrect term would be when actually quoting a passage from the mistranslated text. In the present case we have additional support for using "mark" rather than "marking" in that fact that the previous official translation correctly called it a "mark". If we call it that, the uncertainty in the minds of English speakers about what this thing is would go. No mother-tongue English speaker would ever have called the two letters CE "marking" or "a marking", so the only reason they do so is that the translators were not sure what was meant by the French "marquage". Translators habitually tend to translate the French suffix "-age" by adding any available suffix, usually "-ing", hence they came up with "marking", but if they had understood what the authors actually intended they would not have called it a marking, since that suggests a collection of marks.UBJ 43X (talk) 17:22, 27 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Marking vs mark - Marking is put on the product by the manufacturer as required by law, while a test mark is awarded by a test house. In many cases the CE marking is done by self-declaration of the manufacturer. While the Kite-Mark or the GS-Mark is awarded by a test house.

Suggested rewrite
May I suggest to you that this entire article requires a rewrite. In my opinion, the quality of the writing and the gramatical style is quite poor.--94.194.125.249 (talk) 23:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.235.56.99 (talk) 10:04, 2 June 2022 (UTC)


 * So go ahead and rewrite it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:01, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

List of Product groups requiring CE marking
This list is not up to date: example it is missing Construction Products - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_Products_Directive

The list is not consistent. A number of the listed items such as "Electromagnetic compatibility", "Low voltage", and "Restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment RoHS 2" are not "product groups" Simonbr (talk) 10:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Example of a real CE mark
Just found something in the German article about the CE mark that might help to identify wether it's the "real deal" or the China Export mark, which usually has the C and the E much closer together.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/f/fd/CE-Norm.svg and

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:CE-Norm.svg&filetimestamp=20090427185808

Might be worth adding to the article. I'm a wiki-noob, so I don't want to mess up the article trying to add it. --84.62.146.232 (talk) 18:01, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Adding a graphic showing how the logo glyphs are spaced might assist with the possible confusion with the above mentioned China Export mark.
 * The links below have diagrams showing the layout which may be on some EU standards page already.
 * http://www.hse.gov.uk/work-equipment-machinery/images/cegrid.gif
 * http://www.marcado-ce.com/imagenes/cabeceras/en_what_is_ce_marking.jpg
 * Idyllic press (talk) 20:25, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Dimensions Information is missing
"The letters "CE" are not enough." CE_mark -- 06.03.2012 08:36

If that is so, what has to be written next to "CE" ? As already said above, a rewrite would probably raise the quality of this article. Killalord1 (talk) 07:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

“CE marking” move and history
I don’t think there is an issue with changing the article title (suggested at /Archive 1), but it was done with a cut-and-paste move.


 * In January 2004 the page under CE marking was created
 * In December 2004 this page under CE mark as created as a stub
 * In January 2005 CE marking was merged into CE mark
 * Now (2012) we want to rename the article CE mark → CE marking

To preserve the history of the current article, as well as the history of CE marking from 2005, I suggest moving


 * CE marking → Talk:CE mark/CE marking (2005 history)
 * CE mark → CE marking, including the talk page and subpages

However I cannot do the second move, despite expecting to be able to. I have asked for the temporary redirect at CE marking to be deleted. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 01:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Hopefully all is well now. I had to move the subpages manually; I thought there was meant to be an option to do it automatically. Oh well. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 14:12, 28 June 2012 (UTC).

Logo fix requested
Just a small request to whoever has the easy tools to edit the CE logo graphic. At each thumbnail and scaling level the edges of the image are trimmed by a varying number of pixels or whatever and this causes the parts of the logo that are touching the edges to become flattened or cropped. It would be an improvement if there was some whitespace around the image (in the amount of say half the stroke width) to prevent this from happening.

Idyllic press (talk) 20:22, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on CE marking. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130425235856/http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/faq/index_en.htm to http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/faq/index_en.htm#09012624859cd715

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 17:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

CE Marking is not a "certification mark"
This is totally a false and/or misleading claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.119.176.157 (talk) 02:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)


 * A certification mark is awarded by a test house, like the Kite-Mark, or the GS-Mark. The CE Marking is put on the product by the manufacturer as part of her self-declaration, as required by law. The CE Marking is not awarded. The CE Marking shall foremost facilitate free trade between EU member states.

China Export myth again
Although comprehensively discussed above, u|זור987 wants to insert a user-generated drawing that זור987 says is an illustration of this purported China Export mark. It is not. Even the file description says that it is not. In an edit note, זור987 says that they have seen products with this mark, but has not provided any actual evidence. China Export is an urban myth, it doesn't exist and never has existed, the Commission spent a lot of time searching for evidence of it and found none. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:27, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Just in case it is the reason for the misunderstanding, it is entirely legitimate for products from China to bear a CE mark (and an FCC mark and bunch of other marks) provided only that the manufacturer has met the criteria needed to allow it to use the mark.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:46, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The picture I put in the article, is a comparison between the real EU CE mark and the "China Export" mark and not the entire mark. And yes: I've seen Chinese products with the fake CE mark with the smaller space between C and E in a lot of products that are imported to Israel from China. זור987 (talk) 08:58, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that this counts as WP:OR. If you read the Commission response carefully, they say that (a) they searched for any evidence of any recognised "China Export" mark and found none: it doesn't exist; (b) they are aware of misuse of the mark on products that don't meet the required standards (same as there are fake 'designer bags', forged €100 banknote etc). It is up to national customs authorities to check good for compliance, even if they have CE, FCC, EAC, CCC, GS, UL and every other mark all perfectly formed. So if you found a product that had a small kerning error in the mark, then you found a product with a small kerning error in the mark, nothing more. It would be no defence in law to say that it isn't exactly the same (see passing off). To jump from a malformed mark to "China Export" is Trump logic. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:37, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Here is my picture of a label with the "China Export" logo. In this case, the label is of a Chinese LED street light. זור987 (talk) 10:57, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it is not a "China Export" logo, it is a (slightly off) CE mark. It also has an FCC mark, is that secret code for From Chinese Company? What you have got there is a cheaply produced label, where the manufacturer decided that the lettering is good enough, which it is: it wouldn't satisfy a typographer but it only needs to satisfy a customs officer and wholesale buyer. It gives no support to the China Export myth. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:10, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * When I said above that you haven't produced any evidence, this is still not that evidence. The evidence we need is that a "China Export" mark actually exists. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:13, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So is it the time to remove the section about "China Export" logo from the article? זור987 (talk) 11:44, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately no, because the myth has actually gained 'legs'. It is out there so it is reasonable for Wikipedia to report it. So actually you have helped improve the article because you raised questions that weren't properly answered before now. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:27, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

European Organisation for Technical Approvals (EOTA)
According to that article, to get CE marking, one needs a certification from EOTA or an affiliated body. The fact that this organization was not mentioned here (until I added it to see also) suggests our article is quite confusing/incomplete (or that article on EOTA is...). Or both. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:43, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is unclear but I wonder if you have misunderstood? My reading is that EOTA designs and writes ETA specifications. Period. They don't do any testing or certification. When a vendor / manufacturer has a product that is subject to a conformity requirement, the use the relevant ETA produced by EOTA or its predecessors. NB that this is theoretical from reading the articles as I have no practical experience. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:31, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @John Maynard Friedman I think you are right, and I am not an expert either. Still, isn't a CE marked product one that meets ETA specifications (by EOTA)? I.e. can we have a CE marked product that has not been certified to meet ETA specs? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  05:13, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * If (big if!) I understand it correctly, the job of EOTA is to write specifications but the specs have to be given statutory force through EU Regulations, which is a Commission task. So, by attaching a CE mark, a vendor is affirming that it meets the EC regulation, which coincidentally happens to have begun as an EOTA spec. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 06:28, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Picture
Better replace the picture with one that is compliant. As per EMCD an LVD the postal address should be marked on the device. Esthetic reasons cannot be used not to place it. The have room to place the vanity mark (Designed by Aplle), so the address could be placed instead. Furtermore, the WEEE wheeled bin logo should have a bar underneath. Unless this is a really old device. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:1C01:4B02:D900:AAC4:6D2D:CBCE:C9E1 (talk) 03:18, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Nothing about fake CE markings on exported Chinese goods?
I came here looking for information on the false CE logos that appear on exported Chinese goods. However, there doesn't appear to be anything about it here. Or on Wikipedia at all.

I thought maybe it had it's own page, but there is no such page listed in "See Also".

I was hoping to get more information about the spurious logos ftom China, such as how to tell them apart from genuine CE logos, if at all possible. Or whether they actually stand for "Chinese Export" or if that's just internet myth.

In summary, I think it would be a good idea to either have a section on this page, or a separate page about the false CE logo used on exported Chinese goods. I would think just including a section on this page would be good enough. VoidHalo (talk) 20:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Because it is an urban myth. But yes, it is covered - see CE marking.
 * Any vendor anywhere can attach a perfectly formed conformance mark to a nonconforming product. It is the wholesaler's and retailer's job to verify. China is just a convenient scapegoat to imply that it is the only place it happens (though if course some of the fraudsters are from there). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:25, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. I scanned through the article, but must have missed it. I'll have a look.
 * I had a feeling the "Chinese Export" thing was a myth. It just doesn't make sense that they would give it some official definition when it isn't technically official in that context in the first place.
 * I appreciate you confirming it. And pointing me to the relevant section in the page for it. VoidHalo (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

CE mark historic dimensions?
This reddit user claims older CE marks do not bear the same dimensions as the latest marks and thus bear more resemblance to the China Export mark commonly seen on many Chinese products. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/s/rdmEZzFWsc Would it be advisable to add known historical dimensions of the mark to this page? 97.113.208.131 (talk) 17:15, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This reddit user is either gullible or a troll. The so-called "China Export mark" is a hoax: it doesn't exist, it has never existed. See CE marking. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:50, 19 May 2024 (UTC)