Directive 2011/65/EU requires Member States to ensure that electrical and electronic equipment placed on the market does not contain lead.

Point 7(a) of Annex III to Directive 2011/65/EU exempted the use of lead in high melting temperature type solders (i.e. lead-based alloys containing 85 % by weight or more lead) until 21 July 2016. The Commission received an application for renewal of this exemption in relation to categories 1 to 7 and 10 before 21 January 2015, in accordance with Article 5(5) of Directive 2011/65/EU.

Lead gives solders crucial properties such as high melting point, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, ductility, corrosion-resistivity, appropriate oxidation nature, and wettability.

Currently, substitution or elimination of lead in high melting temperature solders is still scientifically or technically impracticable. Neither is it at current stage possible to narrow the scope of the exemption due to the high diversity of the applications concerned.

Since for the applications concerned in categories 1 to 7 and 10 no reliable alternatives are available on the market or are likely to be available on the market in the near future, a renewal of the exemption with a validity period until 21 July 2021 is justified, while nonessential splitting of the wording and a shorter period could generate unnecessary administrative burden for the industry. In order to avoid overlapping scopes of exemptions within the Annex III to Directive 2011/65/EU, the proposed wording clarifies that the applications covered by exemption 24 (solders for the soldering to machined through hole discoidal and planar array ceramic multilayer capacitors) are excluded from the exemption 7(a). For categories other than categories 1 to 7 and 10, the existing exemption is valid as per the validity periods set out in the second subparagraph of Article 5(2) of Directive 2011/65/EU.

Directive 2011/65/EU should therefore be amended accordingly,