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European Fire Safety Alliance

EuroFSA

The European Fire Safety Alliance is an independent alliance of fire professionals and exists to reduce the risk from fire.

Lobbying Activity

Response to Review of the State aid rules on the Services of General Economic Interest (“SGEI”)

29 Jul 2025

The European Fire Safety Alliance (EuroFSA), Fire Safe Europe, Euralarm, the Council of Gas Detection and Environmental Monitoring (CoGDEM EU), the Modern Building Alliance, Europacable, the European Fire Sprinkler Network (EFSN), the International Bromine Council (BSEF), the Phosphorus, Inorganic and Nitrogen Flame Retardants Association (Pinfa) and Concrete Europe welcome the European Commissions initiative to revise the State aid rules on Services of General Economic Interest (SGEI) in the field of affordable housing. We support the Commissions objectives of improving access to affordable, energy-efficient, and quality housing across the EU and recognise the need for enhanced flexibility in public financing tools to achieve this. However, we urge policymakers to ensure that life safety - including fire, electrical, gas, and carbon monoxide (CO) safety along with indoor environmental quality (IEQ), are recognized as essential pillars of what constitutes quality housing. Housing cannot be considered decent or fit for citizens if it fails to protect life and health. Quality must not be defined by affordability or energy performance alone. Homes that are affordable but unsafe compromise public confidence, endanger lives, and generate long-term economic and societal costs through preventable incidents and health burdens. The ongoing revision of the SGEI (Services of General Economic Interest) framework provides a timely and strategic opportunity to embed these essential safety and health protections into the EUs vision for social and affordable housing. Aligning safety and IEQ standards with public funding support would ensure that the EU delivers not just more housing, but better, safer housing - for all Europeans. Ensuring that minimum safety and health standards are an integral part of social and affordable housing fully aligns with the core mission of SGEIs. It reflects the expectations of EU citizens and the responsibility of public authorities to safeguard well-being while promoting inclusion and sustainability. We encourage the Commission to seize this opportunity to explicitly recognise life safety and IEQ as key criteria within the revised State aid frameworks. We are committed to working with EU institutions, Member States, and housing actors to ensure that Europes affordable housing is not only efficient and accessible - but also healthy and safe. We remain available for continued dialogue on this important matter. Please find our joint position paper enclosed.
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Meeting with Philippe Moseley (Cabinet of Commissioner Dan Jørgensen)

22 May 2025 · Housing, fire safety, sustainability

Meeting with Adam Jarubas (Member of the European Parliament, Committee chair)

21 Nov 2024 · high-level fire safety discussion in the EP - part of Fire Safety Week 2024

Meeting with Adam Jarubas (Member of the European Parliament) and European Chemical Industry Council and

15 Nov 2023 · EFSW2023: Taking stock of progress on fire safety – what should the Commission and Parliament do to improve fire safety in Europe?

Meeting with Seán Kelly (Member of the European Parliament) and Forum for European Electrical Domestic Safety

23 Mar 2023 · Fire Safety

Response to Revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/EU

28 Mar 2022

The European Fire Safety Alliance welcomes the opportunity to express its views on the EPBD revision, which we see as key to succeed the Renovation Wave. The recast of the EPBD is an unmissable opportunity to consider building renovations in a holistic way, placing the fire safety of EU citizens at its heart. The Renovation Wave initiated by the European Commission to reach climate objectives as set by the European Green Deal will massively boost the renovation of the EU building stock. This is an opportunity to keep citizens fire safe. In 2017, references to fire safety were included in the EPBD by Members of the European Parliament. Today, with the recast of the text, we have a new opportunity to clarify and better integrate fire safety provisions. Please find attached the Policy Briefing document “Placing citizen safety at the heart of the Renovation Wave - The opportunity of the EPBD recast”, where we have gathered recommendations from experts and policy makers contributing to the European Fire Safety Week 2021. The document proposes how fire safety must be included in the new EPBD, incl. suggestions of concrete recitals and amendments. The European Fire Safety Alliance is an independent alliance of fire professionals (fire fighters, academics and researchers) committed to support the reduction of the risks from domestic fires.
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Response to Modernising the EU’s batteries legislation

1 Mar 2021

The European Fire Safety Alliance (EuroFSA) is an independent alliance of fire professionals and exists to reduce the risk from fire. The EuroFSA has developed the very first evidence based European Fire Safety Action Plan, defining 10 actions that will improve fire safety in Europe (a result of research, the opinion of hundreds of fire safety experts and the best practices across Europe). The EuroFSA fully supports the ambition of the EU Commission to ensure a competitive, circular, sustainable and safe value chain for all batteries placed on the EU market. EuroFSA's interest in batteries relates in particular to the serious fire hazards posed by batteries. It is not difficult to predict that the increased use of batteries will lead to rise of fires from these popular and convenient energy sources. The European Fire Safety Action Plan (Action Plan) identifies the energy transition, an important element of which is the increasing use of batteries (present and future of energy storage, e-transport, charging stations and consumer electronics), as one of the six priority areas influencing the fire safety in Europe. Experts working on the Action Plan indicated that one of the most important problems was insufficient awareness, knowledge and competency regarding the new fire hazards associated with the energy transition. Fire safety is a very serious challenge for batteries (see as an example Meta-Review of Fire Safety of Lithium-Ion Batteries, 2020), especially for Lithium-Ion ones (LIB). LIB fires pose hazards which are significantly different to other fire hazards in terms of initiation route, rate of spread, duration, toxicity, and suppression, what means they may be very dangerous for users, firefighters and natural environment (see two examples: test 1 and test 2). However, in the proposed Regulation (Annex V), fire hazards are omitted among the nine proposed safety criteria for batteries. The mention in point 2 of Annex V that short-circuiting must not lead to a fire is certainly not a sufficient safety requirement in relation to the scale of hazards posed by a battery fire. EuroFSA strongly recommends supplementing the safety criteria for batteries proposed in Annex V with fire safety requirements for batteries and materials neighboring with them, as well as fire safety for battery chargers, especially charging stations for electric vehicles. It should not be forgotten that the low level of fire safety of batteries may have a negative impact on social acceptance of the entire energy transition process in the EU. See an attached file
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