Ensuring lift safety

KEY POINTS

Directive 2014/33/EU:

• lays down uniform rules on the placing on the market and putting into service of lifts and safety components for lifts;
• applies to lifts that permanently serve buildings and constructions and that are intended for the transport of people and goods;
• does not apply to funicular railways, hoists, escalators, walkways, or slow-speed lifts (i.e. with a speed not exceeding 0.15 m/s).

The directive defines the essential health and safety requirements that each lift must fulfil. It also defines the responsibilities of manufacturers, importers and distributors in the context of the placing on the market of lifts and safety components for lifts:

• all lifts and safety components placed on the EU market must bear the CE conformity marking to show that they meet all the essential safety requirements of EU legislation;
• before obtaining the CE marking, the manufacturer must conduct a conformity assessment¹ to ensure the safety of and establish technical documentation for its lifts and components;
• manufacturers may use harmonised standards, the references to which have been cited in the Official Journal of the European Union, to benefit from a presumption of conformity and facilitated market access;
• importers must check whether safety component manufacturers have carried out conformity assessments correctly and inform the authority responsible for safety monitoring if they consider that the safety components do not conform with the essential health and safety requirements;
• all necessary documentation must be recorded and kept for 10 years;
• documentation and safety information must be written in a language easily understood by end users;
• manufacturers and importers must indicate their postal address on their safety components and lifts;
• upon a request from relevant national authorities, manufacturers may use electronic means to demonstrate conformity.

In addition, the directive specifies how EU Member States’ national authorities responsible for safety monitoring must identify and prevent the import of dangerous safety components or lifts from non-EU countries.

Internal market emergency mode

Amending Directive (EU) 2024/2749 seeks to avoid disruptions to the internal market in the event of an emergency by ensuring that, once an internal market emergency mode, as set out in Regulation (EU) 2024/2747 (the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act), has been activated by means of an implementing act adopted by the Council of the European Union, designated crisis-relevant goods and services² can be placed on the market as rapidly as possible.

Directive (EU) 2024/2749 amends Directive 2014/33/EU setting out how these emergency procedures would apply. Among other things, the new rules:

• require conformity-assessment bodies to prioritise applications for conformity of crisis-relevant products over those for products that are not;
• allow Member States, on an exceptional basis and where there is a duly justified request, to temporarily authorise the placing on the market of equipment without carrying out the normal conformity-assessment procedures, where the involvement of a notified body is mandatory and can ensure that all essential requirements are met;
• allow the competent national authorities to presume that equipment manufactured in accordance with EU standards, relevant applicable national standards or relevant applicable international standards developed by a recognised international standardisation body, identified by the European Commission as suitable to reach conformity and ensuring an equivalent level of protection to that offered by the harmonised standards, complies with the relevant applicable essential requirements;
• give the Commission the possibility to adopt, by means of implementing acts, common specifications on which the manufacturers can rely in order to benefit from a presumption of conformity with the applicable essential requirements (implementing acts laying down such common specifications remain applicable for the duration of the internal market emergency mode).