Most parts of the world - the industrialized parts, anyway - you want to sell an electronic doohickey to the general public, it needs the local flavor of EMI testing, to ensure that it won't interfere with other electronic doohickies - TV sets, cellphones, police radios, clocks, pacemakers, microwave ovens, whatever.
I'd forgotten - as had, apparently, the Raspberry Pi team - that the Eurozone additionally requires EMC testing, to ensure that your doohickey won't crap out when subjected to casual handling, cellphones, malfunctioning microwave ovens, nearby lightning strikes, and the like.
Requires? Really? I can see requiring EMC certification for, oh, medical equipment, avionics, control systems for nuclear power plants, and anything the government is buying... but this seems like it's going way overboard with consumer protection, if indeed it's even meant to be consumer protection. Seems like voluntary certification would be plenty good enough for consumer products... never mind a single-board computer that isn't meant to be a mass-market item in its own right.
Your nanny state @ work: protecting you from the heartbreak of cheap gadgets that don't always work right.
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