CEN TC 175 ROUND AND SAWN TIMBER NORMAMPE Mirror Committee

NORMAPME expert, Mr Ralf Spiekers, represents the German Association for Timber and Synthetic Material and follows the development of standards in both CEN and DIN. His work focuses on CEN/TC 175/WG3/TG7 that deals with normalization of wooden stairs and his main objective is to ensure easy CE-marking for SME producers of traditional timber stairs.

TC 175 has fostered its work on a non-harmonised voluntary standard for traditional wooden stairs. For the moment the standard is not foreseen to contain the Annex ZA and therefore it will not be possible to CE-mark the staircase on the base of this standard. Since this approach was very controversial, NORMAPME tries to inform constantly the stakeholders from different countries about the developments in the work.

The main controversy arises from the pressure of some parties to obtain a possibility of the CE-marking for traditional designed stairs from solid wood. These parties argue that craftsman production is at disadvantage because the industrial and design stairs have the CE marking on the basis of the EOTA guidelines. It has been argued that the market demand for CE-marking may arise i.e. consumers will ask for a proof of conformity with safety requirements. On the other hand most of the interested parties showed resistance to create a standard for single made wooden stairs as it would in their view only bring additional constraints and increase costs that would have to be passed then to customers. Traditional carpenters would be most likely excluded from a market without any good technical reason. Nowadays, the Guidance Paper M of the European Commission stipulates that single orders are outside the CE-Marking which supports the arguments of CE- opponents.

Besides, CEN works on a set of other standards that are going to cover solid wood timber stairs. We have been closely following their development, but so far we have not seen any major problems that could arise for SMEs from this standardisation activity.

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