WEEE/RoHS - Equipment or Component

Lately it was reported, that the EU Commission may propose fresh legislation to iron out problems implementing the EU's WEEE Directive. In the end of January during a session of the European parliament's environment committee, a commission official told MEPs that efforts to implement the law have faced serious handicaps. The first problem is the lack of a European-level clearing mechanism to apply the directives producer responsibility across national borders. Second is a lack of a uniform procedure for drawing up national registers of producers. As we have stressed out in our previous articles already, the WEEE and RoHS Directives have left quite a number of additional open questions that producers, recyclers and authorities have to cope with. One is the question when a device is defined at all as "electrical or electronic equipment" and when it is merely a component. Is a motherboard electronic equipment and as such included in the scope of the directives? And a disk-on-key? Or a transistor? Other questions relate to the interpretation of the RoHS Directive. The one we focus on in this article shall be: Where is the parting line between a spare part or a part used for the upgrade/expansion of the product on the one side and new equipment on the other side?