The ongoing revision of all CEN Safety Standards for lifts to comply with the EC Mandate M/549
As explained in the article published by SBS in February 2019, “Harmonisation of European lifts standards: a rough process”, the European Commission refused to harmonise six EN 81 series standards approved by CEN. This is an unprecedented situation, as, since the entry into force of the first Lifts Directive (95/16/EC), the Commission had never refused to harmonise standards adopted by CEN for what concerns the lift sector. As a consequence, several meetings took place between the Commission services and the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre (CCMC) to find an appropriate solution, and to agree on a timetable for the revision and subsequent harmonisation of the new versions of the EN 81 series standards. At the end of this series of meetings, the Commission asked the CCMC for the CEN/TC10 to continue its work by organising it in three steps. As a first step, the Commission asked CEN to approve a revised version of EN 81-20/50:2019 by September 2019. This new, revised version now includes an accurate Annex ZA, only dated normative references, and an amended foreword. Subject to a positive assessment by the Commission, the standard could be citedin the Official Journal of the European Union in the first quarter of 2020. The second part of the work concerns the immediate revision of the versions of the six standards that were rejected by the Commission in February 2019. This phase serves to include all references to EN 81-20/50:2019, and to implement as many Commission comments as possible on the specific parts of the standards. The Commission provided these comments in a letter on 12 February 2019,. This partial revision of the standards should be finished by the third quarter of 2020with their possible citationin the Official Journal of the European Union in the second quarter of 2021. The final part of the review work will cover the whole family of lift standards, both EN 81-20 and the other complementary standards, to bring them fully into line with the Commission's comments by September 2022. At the end of this long process, the publication of the references of the standards in the Official Journal of the EU would take place by June 2023. The representatives of both SBS and EFESME in CEN/TC 10 are contributing to the work of the Committee to meet the challenging timetable proposed by the Commission. They are active members in the task force that will carry out the technical review of the main standard, EN 81-20, and will ensure that it will fully comply with all the requirements set out in Mandate M/549, including those dealing with fair competition in the internal market.
