Hallo Martin,

have a look at this great link:

http://www.compliance-club.com/KeithArms...tfolio.htm

CE standards are really important, because they help to guarantee, that your product will be able to fit to contaminated environments. It's a difference, whether your product is working well in your living room, or whether it's still working well in a rough industrial environment.

Also, cellphone radiation for instance has become the origin of serious interference and to make your product save against this interference forces you to leave some design practices of the 'seventies' you have taken a fancy to. This is also valid for modern '51 derivatives, with their enormous speed enhancement. What formerly could be soldered on a grid-plate must today be soldered on multilayer PCBs containing solid ground plane and with ferrite bead filters at most inputs and outputs. Connecting a cable going to outer world at the wrong place to PCB can make your product fail all radiation tests, unless you have properly designed your PCB, containing solid ground plane, and accomplishing a 'quiet' place for your cable connection.
Who has provided ESD protection circuitry at inputs and outputs twenty years ago?? Not anyone...

So, introducing these CE standards over the last decade was very helpful to make the engineers to become sensible to EMC and saftey issues. But to pay several thousand Euros for a full CE test isn't nice, of course.

Make no mistake, nearly all over the world your product must comply with EMC and saftey standards. But in 'CE countries' you must guarantee and proof this BEFORE you put your product to market. In other countries you are 'free' up to the moment, that something bad has happened. Then, your product is intensively tested, and if the accident was actually caused by your product, then you might be sent directly into prison...

So, you are ALWAYS responsible, that your product complies with valid EMC and safety standards, and it's you who is sent into prison, if your product causes a serious accident.

Kai