Page 24 - Parquet International luglio 2014

ON FIELD
STANDARDS
The new technical
passport
for parquet and
construction products
Meet the Document of Performance (DoP) that must now accompany the CE Mark for wood floors in compliance with new EU Regulation 305/2011 DOMENICO ADELIZZI
In July 2013, another step forward was taken at European Union level in the di- rection of better regulation and the as- sumption of greater responsibility in the production and sale of construction and fin- ishing products that form part of a building, including wood flooring and parquet in general. Even if it is still not very well
known or adopted by the wood floor sector, EU Regulation 305/2011 signed in Strasbourg in March 2012 and valid for the en- tire European Union as of July 1, 2013, ab- rogates the old 1988 EU Directive (Con- struction Products Di- rective 89/106/EEC) that officialized the essential req- uisites of construction materi- als and regulated the assign- ment of the EC Mark. This Regulation will provide the new reference standard for the production, and above all, the sale of construction products in the European Union, and must be respected by all operators in the chain,
from production to distribution.
The new Regulation and the old Directive: the most significant differences
The first difference from the old Directive CPD 89/106 is a question of legal form: whereas Directives are essentially standards
that must be ratified by member nations and therefore their provisions may be emended by these national governments, Regulations are obligatory and must be applied ipso fac- to ("as is") in all EU nations. The new Reg- ulation is therefore a decisive and more than relevant signal from the European Union that obliges companies working in the raw materials, semi-finished products and construction materials to become more com- petitive at EU level in terms of transparen- cy of information.
The second difference from the past consists in the obligatory introduction of a "Document of Performance” (DoP) that must accompa- ny the CE Mark - which has now also become mandatory, whereas in certain nation (such as England) it was previously merely op- tional. Under the old legislation, the CE Mark applied to construction products only sig- nified that they complied with the standard and that their characteristics had been test- ed according to the standardized methods adopted by all member nations, and for this reason, regardless of wherever in Europe a product was purchased, the purchaser could be sure that the threshold values indicated - even if different from one nation to the next - had been tested everywhere using the same method. The Document of Perfor- mance (DoP) ), instead, introduces one big change in regard to the old Conformity Certificate: whereas previously the confor- mity of the product to a certain verification process was simply accepted, now, the man- ufacturer is obliged to certify that every prod- uct responds in a determined way to the