What the regulation pins down
Regulation (EU) 2016/1628 sets emission limits and type-approval requirements for internal combustion engines fitted to non-road mobile machinery. That phrase covers a very wide range of equipment, and at the small end of it sits the engine in a domestic petrol mower, tiller or shredder.
It fixes the pollutants: the gaseous and particulate substances whose mass, per unit of work, must fall below stated limits. It fixes the categories: engines are sorted by type and by power, and the limits differ between them. It fixes the test: an engine is run over a defined cycle on a bench, and the emissions are measured over that cycle rather than sampled at an arbitrary moment. And it fixes the approval and marking: an engine that has been approved carries a number, and the machine it powers inherits the designation that appears in the listing.
“Stage V” is the name of the current set of limits in that sequence. Earlier stages exist, and engines approved under them remained on the market through defined transition arrangements, which is why a shelf can carry two designations at once.
What it does not promise
It does not describe the machine. The regulation approves an engine. Two mowers with the same approved engine can differ in deck, drive, height adjustment, catcher and build, and the designation is common to both.
It does not describe how the engine behaves in your garden. A bench cycle is a bench cycle; what the engine emits while it labours through wet grass on a slope, half-choked, is not the measured condition.
It does not promise a starting behaviour, a service interval, or an oil consumption. Those are the things that decide whether a petrol machine is pleasant to own, and none of them is in scope.
It does not say anything about noise. The engine’s exhaust emissions and the machine’s acoustic emissions are governed by two entirely separate documents, and the presence of a stage designation says nothing about the figure in the oval on the housing.
And it does not make an engine new. A designation records compliance with a set of limits, not a date of design.
The documents it sits next to
The acoustic side is the outdoor noise directive. The machine that the engine sits in has its own safety standard — the pedestrian mower standard, the tiller standard, the shredder standard — and none of those overlaps with this.
An electric or battery machine has no stage at all, which is a real difference between the shelves rather than an omission, and the comparison pages here say so rather than leaving a blank cell.
Which shelves it reaches here
The petrol mower family cites it, along with the petrol models on the tiller, scarifier and shredder shelves. The gas weed burner family is listed too, although its case is different: a burner has no engine, and what a listing there states about combustion comes from the appliance’s own documentation.
Where a petrol listing on this site prints a stage designation, the review reports it as stated and links here. Where it prints only a displacement and a horsepower figure, the page prints those as the maker’s figures and notes that no approval designation accompanies them.
The questions that keep coming in
Does a Stage V engine use less fuel?
The regulation limits pollutants, not consumption. An engine meeting a later stage may well be more efficient, because the changes that reduce one often reduce the other, but nothing in the designation states it and no listing on this shelf publishes a consumption figure worth comparing.
Is my older machine now illegal to use?
The regulation governs placing engines and machines on the market, not what you may run in your own garden. What applies where you live is a question this site does not answer.
Why do some small engines not carry a stage at all?
Scope depends on the engine — its type and its power. Below certain thresholds, and for certain categories, the requirements differ or do not apply. A listing that names no stage is not necessarily evading one, and the page prints the absence without inferring from it.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026