IEC standard 60335-2-89: 2019: when will it be published in Europe?

The standard IEC 60335-2-89:2019 introduced a number of modifications to allow the use of flammable refrigerant with a charge higher than 150g in plug-in commercial display cabinets. Even if the IEC standard was published in 2019, to be effectively applied in Europe it has to be endorsed as a European Standard EN/IEC 60335-2-89.

After this, in order to get presumption of conformity to all the applicable UE directives, the UE Commission needs to formalize the harmonization of this new standard to the Machinery Directive. The draft EN standard EN/IEC 60335-2-89 was drafted and sent to public enquiry to the National Committee of UE member state with a voting deadline of 20th of August 2021. The voting results, as reported in the attached doc, were positive. Twenty-two countries casted a positive vote, twelve abstained and none voted against, achieving a 100% positive vote.

What happens now? The process will now continue with the formalization of this positive vote in CENELEC (Oct 2021) and with the formal publication by the National Authorities foreseeable at the beginning of 2022. As a last formal step, the Commission will have to finalize the listing of this EN standard as an harmonized Standard according to the Machinery Directive, the last formal step.

The whole process should be completed within q1 2022. Despite the few open steps of the formal process, today we can say that the technical enquiry is closed and that this new standard, technically speaking, has been approved.