The New Legislative Framework (NLF) is the EU framework for product legislation, which includes model provisions, definitions and the main principles for future and revised EU product legislations. Products are increasingly covered by a number of product harmonisation laws. EU product legislation aligned with the NLF has the same structure, same provisions and same definitions of basic terms, such as ‘manufacturer’, ‘importer’, ‘distributor’, ‘making available the product on the Union market’. This helps manufacturers by offering a coherent set of rules.

The Evaluation of the NLF concluded that this product framework is still effective, efficient, coherent with other pieces of legislation and that its EU added value is vital since it has been reducing divergences in the body of EU product legislation. Nonetheless, the framework has also certain weaknesses related to its relevance: The question is if the NLF is able to respond to the current and upcoming needs and cope with challenges such as digitalisation and complex value chains facilitating remanufacturing and high-quality recycling of products.