The authorised representative’s mandate, and what cannot be in it

The authorised representative is the role most often misdescribed, usually as "our EU office" or "the company that handles our CE". It is neither. It is a specific appointment with a written instrument behind it, a floor of tasks the regulation insists the instrument must allow, and a ceiling of tasks it forbids the instrument from containing.

In writing, and it is optional

"May" is not "shall". Unlike some other Union product legislation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 does not compel a manufacturer outside the Union to appoint a representative. What it does is define what one is when you have appointed one, and the appointment has to be a written mandate rather than a course of dealing or an understanding between two companies.

What the mandate cannot contain

This is the sentence to read twice. Designing and constructing the machine to the essential health and safety requirements, and drawing up the technical documentation, can never be moved onto a representative. A representative who offers to "produce your technical file" is offering something the regulation says is not theirs to hold as a delegated duty. They may of course help compile it, in the ordinary commercial sense; the duty stays with the manufacturer either way.

The floor the mandate has to reach

"At least" is doing the work here. A mandate can be broader. It cannot be narrower than these three, so a mandate that quietly omits one of them does not reduce the duty, it describes an appointment that does not meet Article 12(2).

The third is cooperation with national authorities on action taken to eliminate risks presented by a product covered by the mandate.

Ten years outlives the contract

The retention duty in point (a) runs for at least ten years after the product was placed on the market. It is counted from the product, not from the agreement, so it does not end when the representation agreement ends, when the manufacturer appoints somebody else, or when the manufacturer stops trading. Anyone who has taken on this role for a supplier who has since gone quiet already knows this; anyone about to take it on should price it in.

It is also the same ten year duty an importer carries under Article 13(8), which is why this site treats the two roles together: whatever the commercial relationship, the obligation that lands is to still have the documents, in a decade, for machines somebody else built.

What this guide does not cover

Whether you need a representative at all, what a mandate should say beyond the Article 12(2) floor, and how the role interacts with the Market Surveillance Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 are questions for a lawyer rather than for us. The text quoted above is reproduced from the Official Journal so that you can take it to one.