Tüv Nord Scandinavia, formerly RISE, is bankrupt. Hold on, a notified body is bankrupt? How is this even possible?
I don't know. I assume that running a notified body is pretty much like running a cheese shop in a mafia-run town in which everyone is "encouraged" to purchase your cheese. In other words, it's as close you can get to running a money-printing machine in a democratic country, as long as you can put up with the pain of having to deal with the EU and its regulations all day long - this point probably screens out most people who then prefer to work in productive industries instead.
("productive" being defined as "building things" instead of "writing PDFs")
But, ranting aside.. apparently it's possible to actually run a notified body in a way in which it doesn't turn into a money-printing machine, and Tüv Nord Scandinavia is the first data point we have for that.
Fascinating.
First off, here's the official Swedish company registry which shows that Tüv Nord Scandinavia, formerly RISE, has begun bankruptcy proceedings on July 22nd, 2026:
Okay.. so there's a lot to unpack here, and I think we're only scratching the surface as we have very little public information. I mean, writing up this article expands the available public information on the internet probably by 100% or so, haha.. so what happened?
What Happened?
I think you could speculate that this is not entirely the fault of Tüv Nord, only the consequence of some really bad business and acquisition decisions (but then again, which notified body has a good track record of "great business decisions" - do you even need that competence as notified body? okay, enough ranting..).
Until February 2026, which was not too long ago, the company was actually called RISE, which was a completely separate notified body in Sweden.
Tüv Nord acquired RISE in February 2026 and renamed it to Tüv Nord Scandinavia.
So, one could speculate that 1) RISE was already in trouble and looking for a buyer, 2) Tüv Nord thought "hey cool, let's buy this notified body for little money and expand into Scandinavia and 3) all of that didn't work out very well.
So Tüv Nord might mainly carry away reputational damage here as they just recently "re-labeled" RISE to Tüv Nord Scandinavia recently, even though the company was still, in big parts, RISE, and the reasons for its eventual failure might likely predate the 02/2026 acquisition.
But all of this is speculation.
Regardless:
- Tüv Nord Scandinavia, formerly RISE, is bankrupt;
- The other Tüv Nord companies (e.g. Tüv Nord Germany) are not affected.
What does this mean for you now?
What Happens to Customers?
This is arguably a much more tricky question. Just to repeat myself from above:
- If your CE mark shows the notified body number 3033, you are affected.
(For what it's worth, the EU NANDO database with its terrible UI still lists the notified body 3033 as active, but then again, the EU doesn't really have a good track record of shipping great database software) - If it shows another number (e.g. 0044 - Tüv Nord Germany), you are not affected.
It is too early to tell how this will be handled, but my best guess would be that you'll get a (generous) extension to all your deadlines and you will have to move to another notified body.
From what I heard talking to people in the industry, moving notified bodies is mostly a miserable experience, because the new notified body might subject you to additional initial audits as they want to know "what they're getting into". I can't really blame them, but the process sounds terrible for their customers - you're facing significant additional costs for no added benefit (you had one notified body before, and you end up with another notified body - nothing changed).
And you of course get the full package of auditor subjectiveness: Your prior notified body (which is now bankrupt - cool) might have accepted your processes how you did things (software testing, significant changes, etc., the usual subjective stuff), while your new notified body might have entirely different interpretations of how things should be done. The worst thing I could image here would be that notified bodies disagree on the actual classification of your product, e.g. that something is not class I, but now class IIa or so. We've seen all of that happen in the past, and the issue of auditor-subjectiveness is still completely unsolved.
From a legal standpoint, I wonder whether customers actually have to pay for this migration themselves. I mean, technically, this was imposed upon them. Then again, Tüv Nord Scandinavia, by definition, has no money left right now, so they won't be able to pay for this. So I'd guess that customers indeed have to pay for this. Crazy. The other notified bodies are probably rubbing their hands while looking forward to this magical new revenue which is about to materialize in front of them.
Another data point for "notified bodies are money-printing machines, just not Tüv Nord Scandinavia", I guess..
