Directive 89/106/EEC envisages that in order to take account of different levels of protection for the construction works at national, regional or local levels, it may be necessary to establish in the interpretative documents classes corresponding to the performance of products in respect of each essential requirement. Those documents have been published as the ‘Communication of the Commission with regard to the interpretative documents of Directive 89/106/EEC’.

With respect to the essential requirement of safety in the event of fire, interpretative document No 2 lists a number of interrelated measures which together define the fire safety strategy to be variously developed in the Member States.

Interpretative document No 2 identifies one of those measures as the limitation of the generation and spread of fire and smoke within a given area by limiting the potential of construction products to contribute to the full development of a fire.

The level of that limitation may be expressed only in terms of the different levels of reaction-to-fire performance of the products in their end-use application.

By way of harmonised solution, a system of classes was adopted in Commission Decision 2000/147/EC of 8 February 2000 implementing Council Directive 89/106/EEC as regards the classification of the reaction-to-fire performance of construction products.

In the case of steel sheets with polyester coating and with plastisol coating it is necessary to use the classification established in Decision 2000/147/EC.

The reaction-to-fire performance of many construction products and/or materials, within the classification provided for in Decision 2000/147/EC, is well established and sufficiently well known to fire regulators in Member States that they do not require testing for this particular performance characteristic,