The Costs of Indicating Compliance
For a product to be sold in many markets, it must comply with all relevant national requirements. These may include technical, environmental and safety standards as well as showing which agency has approved the device to be sold. In additional, many markets also requires some form of mark or logo as well as information to be provided in the packaging.

In Europe, a study by VVA calculated the total cost of indicating compliance to be in the order of €797 million per year.

The introduction of e-labelling would reduce this by approximately 15%, or about €119 million per year. According to the VVA study these savings are due to:
  • lower costs associated with updating compliance information already on the market
  • lower costs related to differences in national compliance procedures
  • lower administrative burdens associated with answering requests from MSA's
And these costs are just related to Europe. The savings of having e-labelling adopted globally through the harmonization of key trading markets would be even higher. A key point to remember is that e-labelling doesn't change any national requirements for a product to be sold - other than allowing any information or marks/logos etc. that traditionally had to be printed - to be displayed electronically.