EU DIRECTIVE 95/16/EC ON NEW LIFTS

Lifts provide an essential means of comfortable and safe access to modern buildings. The provision of lifts in new buildings and the installation of lifts in many existing buildings have an increasingly important role to play in an ageing society giving growing priority to the social integration of people with special needs. The harmonised European legislation governing the design, manufacturer and installation of lifts has been fully in force since the 1st of July 1999: it has the double aim of permitting the free circulation of lifts within the internal EU market and ensuring a high level of safety for lift users and maintenance staff. While the provisions of the Lifts Directive 95/16/EC are mainly addressed to lift installers and components manufacturers, they also have important implications for the owners and users of lifts.

Technical specifications providing means of satisfying the Essential Health and Safety Requirements (EHSRs) are available in Harmonized European Standards developed by the European Standardization Organisation, CEN: see Lifts standardization. Application of the harmonised standards is voluntary, but when the references of these standards are published in the Official Journal of the European Union, their application confers a presumption of conformity with the essential health and safety requirements they cover.

The Lifts Directive provides a wide choice of conformity assessment procedures covering the design, manufacture assembly, installation and final inspection of lifts, and the design and manufacture of lift safety components. All the procedures involve recourse to Notified Bodies. In some procedures, the Notified Bodies check the conformity of a model of a lift or safety component. In other procedures, Notified Bodies approve and monitor the quality assurance system of the lift installer or safety component manufacturer who is then able to assess the conformity of his products himself. Installers and manufacturers may address any Notified Body in the EU that is approved for the relevant procedure. The certificates issued by a Notified Body are valid in all EU countries. After completing the appropriate conformity assessment procedure, the lift installer or safety component manufacturer draws up and signs an EC declaration of conformity for the product and affixes the CE conformity marking on it.


EU RECOMMENDATION 95/216/EC ON EXISTING LIFTS SAFETY

At the same year when the lifts directive was published, EU Commission adopted Recommendation 95/216/EC concerning the safety of existing lifts (that is to say lifts installed before the Lifts Directive came into force). The Recommendation is NOT LEGALLY BINDING member states and is implemented by the Member States in light of the situation and provisions existing at national level. The recommendation simply invites Member States to take all necessary action to ensure a satisfactory level of maintenance for existing lifts and to improve the safety of these lifts, which is subject to national regulations.
A specific standard was issued by CEN in 2003 to provide a guideline for the improvement of the safety of existing lifts.

National legislation inspired by this recommendation has been passed but not implemented yet, in France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece and Austria. Property owners organizations have strong doubts on the necessity, while building managers have great difficulty in securing the agreement of the individual apartment owners to agree and pay their share of the high costs for the safety inspection and the works of renovation.

Source-related link of EU DG of Enterprise & Industry

Read and print the text of the directive





EXISTING LIFTS IN THE BUILDINGS OF EUROPE: THE BIG PRESENT TO THE EUROPEAN INDUSTRY!
By Michele Vigne, UIPI Vicepresident, President of UIPI Technical Committee


Today in Europe, there many millions of lifts operating in buildings, transporting around 250 million persons every day.
These lifts periodically undergo maintenance and checks on the basis of schedules established by the individual countries.
Each year the existing lifts are joined by the sale and installation of at least 100.000 new ones.
The legislation regulating the installation of a new lift became uniform within the EU starting on 1 July 1999, the date by which the Member States were obliged to definitively adopt the Lifts Directive 95/16/EC after a transitory period of two years.
On the other hand, with regard to the maintenance activity on existing systems, the European situation is not uniform, since the national regulations differ greatly, with some countries imposing compulsory maintenance by specialised organisations, while in others it is of a voluntary nature.
The safety of lifts installations may be considered practically absolute, so much so that it may be said, backed up by incontrovertible data, that today the lift is the safest means of transport that people can use.
The lift sector in Europe counts around 4,000 companies, with 65,000 employees and a turnover of approximately 25,000 million euro.
Maintenance is the most sizable component of this amount (only 70,000 new lifts are sold and installed each year in Europe), and it is thus evident that the attention of lift makers is concentrated on this sector because of the considerably business possibilities it offers.
The largest slice of the market today is in the hands of the three largest companies, and the remainder is divided among around 4,000 smaller firms.
In 1995 the EU, concurrent with Directive 95/16/EC, issued Recommendation 95/216/EC of 8 June, identifying 10 principles for the purpose of ensuring a satisfactory maintenance of the existing fleet of lifts and of improving their safety. (see attachment A)
After that the national lift makers started pressing the member-states to impose compulsory application of thie simple recomendation, for the fear of safety risks of their own elevators, asking for specific legislative measures. Many EU countries have already adopted such legislation.
Since many of the recommendations have actually been implemented with the maintenance operations carried out in previous years (see attachment B), the requests of the lift makers are not limited only to the recommendations, which should guarantee the safety of the passengers transported, but have included another series of points that essentially concern measures for the safety of the workers who service the lifts and other measures not actually indispensable for safety purposes.
The legislation made by France shows how only five of the 17 points requested concern the EU recommendations, and that in any case there should not be any urgent risk conditions, considering that they were identified among the operations to be carried out in the longer term.
The proposal also highlights an aspect that is rather strange: seven points concern aspects connected with the safety of the maintenance workers, which should be charged to the lift makers, and these are among the most urgent operations.
In Italy the situation is similar, and the lift makers to speak out, even demanding the ?scrapping? of the existing lifts because, according to them ? who are themselves responsible for having constructed and sold them ? they are no longer safe!
In addition to the safety to be guaranteed, the lift maker lobby stresses to governments the advisability of creating, with these actions, around 20,000 new jobs in Europe for 10-15 years, naturally at the expense of the lift owners.
Now that CEN has published regulation 81/80, which is a regulation concerning proper techniques in industry, the construction and maintenance companies would like to implement it for the total re-modernisation of existing lifts. However, this regulation cannot in any way be considered as standard, as there is no EU Directive in this regard for existing lifts, but only, rightly, a recommendation.
On the other hand, paragraph a) of the introduction to regulation CEN 81/80 expressly provides that it can be used as a guideline for national authorities to determine a programme for implementing sustainable and practicable safety measures based on the level of risk and economic and social considerations in the country in question.
Therefore, the regulation indicates the general criteria and each country can freely decide which of these to apply, according to their requirements and financial availability.
Thus, it is not necessary for the EU to produce any legislative measures for existing lifts because there is nothing to prevent things remaining as they are and continue the maintenance procedures, assessments and checks already provided by the discipline in force in individual countries, which have been more than satisfactory to date.
As can be seen, the situation gives cause for serious concern, and it is necessary for the real estate ownership organisations of the single countries to cooperate with the pressing on the Governments, in order to prevent the lift maker lobby from acting without the least indispensable opposition.

Michele Vigne, UIPI Vice President
Belluno, Italy, May 2005








COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION 95/216/EC of 8 June 1995, IMPROVEMENT OF SAFETY ON EXISTING LIFTS

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 155, second indent, thereof,
Whereas it is incumbent upon the Member States to provide for the safety of persons on their territory;
Whereas the Member States have not all enacted regulations on the safety of lifts;
Whereas despite the differences in design and age of such lifts, it is possible to identify a minimum number of points to be checked in all such forms of equipment;
Whereas that modernization, in the interest of safety, may be spread over several years,

HEREBY RECOMMENDS THAT THE MEMBER STATES:

1. Take all necessary action, where existing laws are as yet inadequate to meet the requirements of this recommendation:
- ensure a satisfactory level of maintenance for existing lifts,
- improve the safety of these lifts based on the principles in the Annex to this recommendation.
2. Take measures beyond those mentioned in the Annex, if safety demands.
This recommendation is addressed to the Member States.

Done at Brussels, 8 June 1995.- For the Commission -
Martin BANGEMANN - Member of the Commission



ANNEX

PRINCIPLES RELATING TO IMPROVEMENT OF THE SAFETY OF EXISTING LIFTS

Preliminary remark
European standards EN 81-1 and EN 81-2 may be applied, whenever possible, in order to obtain numerical values relating, in particular, to dimensions, tolerances, speeds or acceleration rates.

1. Car doors to be fitted and a floor-level indicator to be fitted inside the car.
2. The car suspension cables to be inspected and possibly replaced.
3. The stop controls to be modified in order to achieve a high degree of precision in the stopping level of the car and a gradual deceleration.
4. Make the controls in both the cars and lift wells intelligible and usable by unaccompanied disabled persons.
5. Fit human- or animal-presence detectors to the automatic doors.
6. For lifts which travel faster than 0,6 m/s, fit a parachute system allowing them to decelerate smoothly when stopping.
7. Modify the alarm systems to establish a permanent link with a high-speed breakdown service.
8. Eliminate any asbestos in the braking systems, where this exists.
9. Fit a device preventing uncontrolled movements towards the top of the car.
10. Provide cars with emergency lighting that operates in the event of a main power supply failure. It must operate for long enough to enable the rescue services to intervene in a normal manner.
The installation must also enable the alarm system provided for in item 7 to function.