The Future of the New Legislative Framework (NLF)

The EU commission is conducting a public consultation for the for the New Legislative Framework and Market Surveillance Regulation. This position summarizes Bitkom's core positions as a response to the consultation.

Since its introduction, the NLF has been key to efficient and fair market access in the EU. Bitkom welcomes the consultation’s direction, which maintains core NLF principles: essential requirements supported by harmonised standards and a risk-based modular conformity-assessment system. However, key issues remain unaddressed:

• Align requirements across NLF acts. Merging NLF and market surveillance will not resolve fragmented or conflicting requirements. Real simplification requires coherent rules and NLF-consistent future legislation.
• Clarify applicability to software. Definitions and processes should be updated to reflect software’s specific characteristics, its environments, rapid release cycles and digital distribution.
• Ensure the legally compliant supply of spare parts. A large legal uncertainty related to circularity comes from spare parts. Components intended as spares should only need to meet the NLF rules that applied when the original product was placed on the market (“repair-as-produced”).

At the same time, the consultations suggest introducing new requirements that would impose additional obligations on already compliant EU companies, while non-compliant producers or retailers are unlikely to be effectively addressed. We therefore call for a stronger focus on enforceability assessments that systematically evaluate whether proposed regulatory measures can be enforced in practice and whether they are likely to achieve their intended objectives.