Background
The interest in preparing non-prescriptive and performance-based standards that have global relevance started in ISO more or less at the time when the text of the European Lifts Directive 95/16/EC was being prepared within the European Commission. The idea was that such standards would be suitable for implementation throughout the whole world without any need for local deviations.
In trying to copy the Essential Health and Safety Requirements of the Lifts Directive, ISO TC178 developed a Technical Specification, TS 22559-1, Safety requirements for lifts (elevators) – Part 1: Global Essential Safety Requirements for lifts (GESRs). In this document, by making use of the procedures for risk assessment and risk reduction, new wording, often more appropriate, was proposed for most of the Essential Health and Safety Requirements (EHSR) of Annex 1 of the Lifts Directive. This means, though, that there are some technical differences between the GESRs of the ISO document and the EHSR of the Lifts Directive. The former Technical Specification had been converted into an ISO standard, now ISO 8100- 20, although ISO rules require to revise it.