EuroWindoor fights for harmonisation of internal fire doors
EuroWindoor together with EDSF – European Door & Shutter Federation and SBS – Small Business Standards pointed out in a joint position on fire doors and internal pedestrian doorsets in October that the European internal market is constrained by contrary requests of CEN and European Commission. Not synchronized developments of the standards and their “non-citation” like for EN 14351-2 will lead to difficulties and confusion on the market. The European Commission was asked to act immediately by implementing the below three-step approach to minimise the impact on the sector:
- extend the co-existence period for EN 16034 beyond 01 November 2019
- ensure that it is aligned with the co-existence period for EN 14351-2
- cite EN 14351-2 in the Official Journal of the European Union without any further delay
As long as the harmonisation does not happen internal pedestrian doorsets according to EN 14351-2 and related fire doors cannot be CE marked and do still have to apply to national certification schemes.
Unfortunately the European Commission did not follow this approach and justified this in a letter from end of October with several legal reasons based on current judgments and too little time required for the formal process. At a meeting with the CEN/TC 33 Convenors Group and Liaison organisations like EuroWindoor on November 19th, 2019 in Brussels the European Commission confirmed this procedure. EuroWindoor is of the opinion that the decision of the European Commission not to cite EN 14351-2 is the first step towards a distortion of the internal market for internal fire doors which will also undermine the trust in the European project. Therefore EuroWindoor would like to encourage the European Commission again to reconsider their decision not to cite EN 14351-2 by a new position proposing to make CE marking possible for all manufacturers on equal terms in European market.