Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230

Last reviewed: October 2026 · Sources listed at the end of this page.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2023 on machinery becomes the principal EU law on machinery safety on 20 January 2027, under three months after this review. It replaces Directive 2006/42/EC (the Machinery Directive). Machinery placed on the market or put into service from that date must meet the Regulation, not the Directive. The date has not been postponed: the consolidated text of 27 July 2026, which includes the latest amendments, still gives 20 January 2027.

The Regulation was published on 29 June 2023 (OJ L 165, 29.6.2023, p. 1) and entered into force on 19 July 2023. The Directive continues to apply until 19 January 2027 inclusive and is repealed with effect from 20 January 2027 (Article 51(2)). The original OJ text printed its dates six days too early (14 January 2027 instead of 20 January 2027). The corrigendum published on 4 July 2023 (OJ L 169, p. 35) corrected them, so any source quoting 14 January 2027 is working from the uncorrected text.

Legal status and timeline

• Adoption: 14 June 2023.
• Publication in the OJEU: 29 June 2023 (OJ L 165); corrigendum 4 July 2023 (OJ L 169, p. 35).
• Entry into force: 19 July 2023.
• Application of Notified Body provisions (Chapter V, Articles 26–42): 20 January 2024 (Article 54(a)).
• Penalties (Article 50(1)): applies from 20 October 2026, the same date by which Member States had to notify their rules to the Commission (Article 50(2)).
• General date of application: 20 January 2027 (Article 54).
• Repeal of Directive 2006/42/EC: with effect from 20 January 2027 (Article 51(2)).
• Amendments so far: Regulation (EU) 2024/2748 (emergency procedures in new Chapter IVa, which operate only when activated for an internal market emergency) and Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (AI, see below). Neither changes the application date.

What 20 January 2027 means in practice

The cut-off applies to each individual machine, not to a model. A design that was compliant under the Directive still needs assessing under the Regulation for every unit placed on the market from 20 January 2027.

The Regulation cannot replace the Directive early: the Commission states that all machinery placed on the market before 20 January 2027 must comply with the Directive. It also allows manufacturers to state on the EU Declaration of Conformity that such machinery also conforms with the Regulation, where applicable. New designs that will still be shipping after the date can therefore be built to both.

Before the date, a manufacturer should check whether each product falls in Annex I, redo the risk assessment against Annex III, update the technical documentation to Annex IV, prepare a declaration to Annex V, and review the instructions. If a Notified Body is needed, it must be notified under the Regulation, which can be checked in the NANDO database.

Harmonised standards: the gap to watch

Presumption of conformity under Article 20(1) requires a standard whose reference is published in the Official Journal under the Regulation. Existing citations do not carry over by themselves: Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/2015 repeals the Directive's list, Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1586, with effect from 20 January 2027. The Commission's standards page says a new Implementing Decision is being prepared, that it will feature the vast majority of standards currently cited under the Directive, and that it can be expected before the end of the year. No such decision had been found in the Official Journal when this page was reviewed on 31 October 2026.

This matters most for Annex I Part B, because Module A is only open where category-specific harmonised standards or common specifications are applied. If none is cited for a category on the day, the manufacturer needs a Notified Body route. For other machinery the Regulation remains usable without harmonised standards, but the manufacturer loses the presumption and must show conformity directly in the technical documentation. Check the Commission's list before signing a declaration.

Cybersecurity requests for delay

Industry associations have asked for the cybersecurity requirements in Annex III to be aligned with the Cyber Resilience Act date of 11 December 2027. That has not been enacted. Sections 1.1.9 and 1.2.1 apply from 20 January 2027 with the rest of the Regulation, and no postponement appears in the consolidated text of 27 July 2026.

Scope: products covered

Article 2(1) of Regulation 2023/1230 applies to:

• Machinery — defined in Article 3(1) as "an assembly, fitted with or intended to be fitted with a drive system other than directly applied human or animal effort, consisting of linked parts or components, at least one of which moves, and which are joined together for a specific application".
• Interchangeable equipment — items mounted on machinery or on a tractor to modify or add a function, not a tool.
• Safety components — components placed on the market separately whose failure or malfunction endangers safety, including software performing a safety function.
• Lifting accessories — components not attached to lifting machinery but enabling load-holding.
• Chains, ropes and webbing — when designed and constructed for lifting purposes.
• Removable mechanical transmission devices.
• Partly completed machinery — an assembly that is almost machinery but cannot perform a specific application on its own, intended to be incorporated into other machinery.

Inclusion of software

Article 3(3) defines a safety component as "a physical or digital component, including software", designed or intended to fulfil a safety function and independently placed on the market. This is a substantive extension over Directive 2006/42/EC, under which standalone safety software occupied a contested place. Under the Regulation, safety software placed on the market separately is itself a safety component requiring CE marking, technical documentation, and (where applicable) a Notified Body assessment.

Exclusions

Article 2(2) excludes, among others: safety components intended as spare parts to replace identical components and supplied by the original manufacturer; specific equipment for use in fairgrounds or amusement parks; machinery specially designed for use in a nuclear installation whose conformity could undermine nuclear safety; weapons, including firearms; means of transport by air, on water and on rail networks, motor vehicles, two- or three-wheel vehicles and agricultural and forestry tractors within their type-approval regulations (in each case except for machinery mounted on them); seagoing vessels and mobile offshore units and machinery installed on board; machinery specially designed for military or police purposes, or for temporary laboratory research; mine winding gear; machinery intended to move performers during artistic performances; high-voltage switchgear, control gear and transformers; and certain electrical and electronic products insofar as they fall within the scope of the Low Voltage Directive or the Radio Equipment Directive (household appliances intended for domestic use which are not electrically operated furniture, audio and video equipment, IT equipment, ordinary office machinery other than additive printing machinery for producing three-dimensional products, low-voltage switchgear and control gear, and electric motors). Manufacturers of these excluded electrical products apply the Low Voltage Directive or Radio Equipment Directive (and the EMC Directive where relevant), not the Machinery Regulation.

Essential health and safety requirements

Annex III sets out the essential health and safety requirements (EHSRs). The structure follows that of Annex I of Directive 2006/42/EC but with significant additions:

• Chapter 1 — General EHSRs, applicable to all machinery: general remarks (section 1.1, including principles of safety integration, lighting, ergonomics and protection against corruption) and the sections listed below.
• Risk assessment (Annex III, Part B, general principles). Manufacturers must identify hazards, estimate risks, evaluate risks, and eliminate or reduce risks by design, then by safeguarding, then by user information (the hierarchy is unchanged from the predecessor).
• Section 1.2 — Control systems. Includes new provisions for software safety, cybersecurity protection where it affects safety, and machine-learning components that may evolve over the lifecycle.
• Section 1.3 — Mechanical hazards; section 1.4 — guards and protective devices; section 1.5 — other hazards (electrical, physical, chemical, biological); section 1.6 — maintenance; section 1.7 — information.
• Chapters 2–6 — Supplementary EHSRs for machinery for foodstuffs, cosmetics or pharmaceutical products, portable hand-held or hand-guided machinery, woodworking machinery and machinery for applying plant protection products (Chapter 2), mobility (Chapter 3), lifting (Chapter 4), underground work (Chapter 5), and lifting persons (Chapter 6).

Cybersecurity and AI

Annex III, section 1.1.9 ("Protection against corruption"), requires that the connection of another device, including via a remote device, does not lead to a hazardous situation, and that safety-critical software, data and hardware components are adequately protected against accidental or intentional corruption, with evidence of interventions collected. Section 1.2.1 further requires control systems to withstand, where appropriate to the circumstances and the risks, reasonably foreseeable malicious attempts from third parties leading to a hazardous situation, and to enable a tracing log of interventions and safety software versions for five years after upload. These are the first explicit cybersecurity requirements in machinery law. For machinery with fully or partially self-evolving behaviour or logic, the general principles require the risk assessment to cover hazards from its intended evolution that are foreseeable at the time of placing on the market, and section 1.2.1 requires that the control system does not cause the machinery to perform actions beyond its defined task and movement space that it can be corrected at all times to maintain its inherent safety, and that data on safety-related decisions is recorded and kept for one year.

Annex I: high-risk machinery and category lists

Annex I of Regulation 2023/1230 replaces Annex IV of Directive 2006/42/EC and lists the categories of machinery and related products that are subject to stricter conformity assessment. It is split into two parts with different consequences.

Part A — Notified Body always required (6 categories)

1. Removable mechanical transmission devices including their guards;
2. Guards for removable mechanical transmission devices;
3. Vehicle servicing lifts;
4. Portable cartridge-operated fixing and other impact machinery;
5. Safety components with fully or partially self-evolving behaviour using machine learning approaches ensuring safety functions;
6. Machinery that has embedded systems with fully or partially self-evolving behaviour using machine learning approaches ensuring safety functions that have not been placed independently on the market, in respect only of those systems.

Part B — Notified Body required unless harmonised standards are applied in full (19 categories)

Part B carries over most of the former Annex IV list, for example circular saws and band-saws for wood or meat, hand-fed surface planing machinery, portable chainsaws for woodworking, manually loaded presses (including press-brakes) for the cold working of metals, injection and compression moulding machinery for plastics or rubber, machinery for underground working, manually loaded household refuse trucks, devices for lifting persons or persons and goods involving a hazard of falling from a vertical height of more than three metres, protective devices designed to detect persons, power-operated interlocking movable guards for presses and moulding machinery, logic units to ensure safety functions, and roll-over and falling-object protective structures (ROPS and FOPS).

Conformity assessment procedures

Article 25 sets out the routes; the modules are in Annexes VI (A), VII (B), VIII (C), IX (H) and X (G). Article 18 applies the same routes to a person who substantially modifies machinery.

The Part A entries for machine-learning safety functions are the most significant structural change: for these systems, third-party assessment is mandatory regardless of the standards applied. Where a route in Article 25(2), or Article 25(3)(b) to (d), is used, the CE marking is followed by the Notified Body's identification number (Article 24(3)). See conformity assessment modules for what each module involves.

Technical documentation

Annex IV sets the contents of the technical documentation. Part A applies to machinery and related products; Part B to partly completed machinery. Part A requires, among other things:

• A complete description of the machinery and its intended use;
• The risk assessment documentation, including the applicable EHSRs, the protective measures for each and, where appropriate, residual risks;
• Design and manufacturing drawings and schemes, with the explanations needed to understand them;
• The harmonised standards or common specifications applied, and descriptions of other technical specifications used where they were not applied or only partly applied;
• Reports or results of design calculations, tests, inspections and examinations;
• The means used during production to ensure conformity and, for series production, the internal measures to keep it;
• A copy of the instructions for use;
• Where appropriate, declarations of incorporation and assembly instructions for partly completed machinery, and declarations for incorporated products;
• The source code or programming logic of safety-related software, on reasoned request from a competent authority;
• For sensor-fed, remotely driven or autonomous machinery whose safety-related operations are controlled by sensor data, a description of the sensing system where appropriate.

Article 10(3) requires the technical documentation and the EU Declaration of Conformity to be kept at the disposal of market surveillance authorities for at least ten years after the machinery has been placed on the market or put into service; where relevant, source code or programming logic must be made available on reasoned request. See technical documentation.

EU Declaration of Conformity

Article 21 and Annex V, Part A, set the Declaration's contents. Among the listed particulars are the machinery and its manufacturer, the address of the place of use for lifting machinery that is permanently installed in a building or structure and can only be assembled there, the standards or specifications applied, and, where applicable, the Notified Body's name and number and the EU type-examination certificate. It must be continuously updated, translated as required by the Member State, and combined into a single declaration where other Union acts also require one (Article 21(2) and (3)). Article 10(8) allows the manufacturer to give an internet address or machine-readable code in the instructions instead of supplying the Declaration physically; it must stay accessible for the expected lifetime and at least 10 years. See EU Declaration of Conformity.

Partly completed machinery

For partly completed machinery, the manufacturer follows Article 11, issues an EU Declaration of Incorporation (Article 22 and Annex V Part B) rather than a Declaration of Conformity, draws up the documentation in Annex IV Part B and supplies assembly instructions (Annex XI). The CE mark is not affixed. The declaration must state that the product shall not be put into service until the final machinery has been declared in conformity.

Marking and labelling

Article 24 requires machinery to bear the CE marking and, where a Notified Body is involved, its four-digit identification number. Beyond the CE marking, machinery must bear at minimum the following, on the machinery or where that is not possible as Articles 10(5) and (6) allow (see also Annex III section 1.7.3):

• The manufacturer's name, registered trade name or registered trade mark, and postal address and website, e-mail address or other digital contact;
• Designation of the model, series or type;
• Batch or serial number or other identification element, where one exists;
• Year of construction (the year in which the manufacturing process was completed);
• Where applicable, marking for use in potentially explosive atmospheres and the mass of parts handled with lifting equipment.

Markings must be visible, legible, and indelible. The instructions for use must be in a language easily understood by users, as determined by the Member State concerned. Article 10(7) permits instructions to be supplied in digital format. The manufacturer must then mark how to access them, make them printable and downloadable, keep them online for the expected lifetime and at least 10 years, and supply paper free of charge within one month if requested at the time of purchase. For machinery intended for or reasonably foreseeably used by non-professional users, the safety information essential for putting into service and safe use must be supplied on paper.

What changes from the Directive

Material changes from Directive 2006/42/EC to Regulation 2023/1230:

• Regulation, not Directive. Direct application across Member States; no national transposition required. This eliminates the inconsistencies between Member State implementations of the Directive.
• Inclusion of software safety functions. Safety software placed on the market separately is now a safety component.
• Cybersecurity essential requirements. Annex III, sections 1.1.9 and 1.2.1 — protection against corruption and against reasonably foreseeable malicious attempts.
• Self-evolving machinery (AI/machine learning). Annex III, general principles and section 1.2.1 — risk assessment of intended evolution and limits on the task and movement space.
• Annex I structure. Part A (six categories, Notified Body always required, including machine-learning safety functions) and Part B (19 categories, Module A allowed only with full application of harmonised standards).
• Digital format for instructions and Declaration. Article 10(7) and (8).
• Substantial modification. Article 3(16) defines a substantial modification and Article 18 treats the person who carries it out as a manufacturer, who must apply the relevant Article 25 procedure. A non-professional user modifying their own machinery for their own use is exempt.
• Notified Body framework. Strengthened designation and surveillance under Articles 26–42.

The Commission may amend the Annex I list by delegated act (Article 6). Its first report on the Annex I data was due by 20 July 2026 (Article 53(3)).

Frequently asked questions

When does the Machinery Regulation apply?

From 20 January 2027 (Article 54). Directive 2006/42/EC applies until 19 January 2027 inclusive. The 14 January 2027 date in the original Official Journal text was corrected by the corrigendum of 4 July 2023.

Can stock built under the Machinery Directive still be sold after 20 January 2027?

Yes, if it was placed on the market in conformity with the Directive before that date (Article 52(1)). Units first placed on the market on or after that date must meet the Regulation, even if they were built earlier.

Do harmonised standards under the Machinery Directive still count after 20 January 2027?

Not automatically. Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/2015 repeals the Directive list from that date, and presumption of conformity under Article 20(1) needs a reference published under the Regulation. The Commission says a new list is being prepared.

Does the Machinery Regulation need a Notified Body?

Only for some products. Annex I Part A always needs one. Annex I Part B needs one unless category-specific harmonised standards or common specifications are applied. Other machinery uses Module A, internal production control.

Does the Machinery Regulation apply to users of machinery?

It places obligations mainly on manufacturers, authorised representatives, importers and distributors. A user becomes a manufacturer if it substantially modifies machinery in a professional setting, or if it builds machinery for its own use and puts it into service. Employers also remain subject to national workplace safety rules.

Related legislation

Machinery is rarely covered only by the Machinery Regulation. Typical stacking:

• EMC Directive 2014/30/EU — for electromagnetic compatibility of electrically powered machinery.
• Low Voltage Directive 2014/35/EU — Article 2(2)(p) of the Machinery Regulation excludes certain electrical products falling within the scope of the LVD or RED. For other machinery, Annex III section 1.5.1 applies the LVD safety objectives, while conformity assessment for electrical risks is governed solely by the Machinery Regulation.
• Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU — for machinery containing wireless modules.
• ATEX Directive 2014/34/EU — for machinery intended for use in potentially explosive atmospheres.
• Pressure Equipment Directive 2014/68/EU — for pressure equipment integrated in machinery; equipment classified no higher than category I and covered by machinery law falls outside the PED (PED Article 1(2)(f)).
• RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU — for the electrical and electronic equipment within machinery.
• Outdoor Equipment Noise Directive 2000/14/EC — for outdoor machinery emitting noise.
• Lifts Directive 2014/33/EU — for lifts permanently serving buildings and structures; as more specific legislation, it displaces the Machinery Regulation for the risks it covers (Article 9).
• AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) — Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI, in force since 27 July 2026) moved the Machinery Regulation to Section B of AI Act Annex I, so the AI Act's high-risk requirements do not apply directly to machinery. Instead, under new paragraphs in Article 8, the Commission must add health and safety requirements for high-risk AI systems to Annex III by delegated acts, and those acts must apply by 2 August 2028. That is a date of application, not an adoption deadline. Until standards are available under this Regulation, new Article 20(10) gives a presumption of conformity for AI systems complying with standards under the AI Act.

Sources

• Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 of 14 June 2023 on machinery — OJ text; consolidated text of 27 July 2026.
• Corrigendum to Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, OJ L 169, 4.7.2023, p. 35 — EUR-Lex.
• Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI), Article 3 — EUR-Lex.
• Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/2015 — EUR-Lex.
• European Commission — Harmonised standards for machinery.
• Directive 2006/42/EC on machinery (predecessor) — EUR-Lex.
• European Commission — Machinery sector (Single Market and Standards).
• Commission Notice — Blue Guide 2022 — EUR-Lex.
• Commission Guide to application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC (edition 2.3, April 2024) — Commission.