This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the presence of Europe’s Energy Labels in retail outlets. As a pioneering sector, as Ceced underlines, the household appliance industry can attest to the effectiveness of the tool that has been guiding consumers towards purchasing energy efficient products and has enabled appliance manufacturers to showcase technological improvements and innovation.
“We want to keep the success story going on – declared Paolo Falcioni, Ceced Director General – and ensure that the label continues to have a positive impact. There are indeed a couple product categories whose label top classes are getting saturated, like washing machines. In such cases, the relevant product measures can be assessed instead of unnecessarily reopening the entire framework. Indeed the current framework already provides sufficient scope to solving those issues.»
The review of the EU Energy Label, which is part of the Commission’s 2015 work programme, is naturally of great importance for home appliance industry.
According to Ceced, however, the industry does not see a pressing need to review the Energy Labelling Framework Directive, especially as some new Energy Labels have just entered into force or are about to be applied, such as those for cooking products and water heaters.
A recent study testing the understanding of consumers over a transition from the current to a future label layout demonstrated that any transition would be a source of confusion for consumers, no matter what label format was used. It is therefore crucial to avoid unnecessary transitions.
