EXPERIENCE OF ROMANIA IN THE

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROCODES

GENERAL DIRECTOR
OVIDIU CORDONEANU

I would like to begin my speech by highlighting the main objectives of the

European Union:
- Promoting a continuous, harmonious and balanced development of the
member states,
- Creating a common market,
- Implementing an agreed legislation to enable the functioning of the
common market,
- Eliminating customs duties,
- Freedom of movement for goods, persons, services and capital,
- Creating new jobs.

We believe that a member or associate state to the common market must not
only be able to create conditions for the production of goods according to
community standards, but should also be able to guarantee that all products
placed on the market - projects, materials, equipment, etc. - meet the
standards. This means not only that the Member States have to adapt the
appropriate legislation, but also to create all the necessary structures and
techniques to effectively implement the new legislation.

We are aware that the harmonization of technical requirements for building

design, quality materials, equipment and generally construction products
will increase the mobility of designers, will eliminate technical and
commercial barriers in trade industry, leading to a similar treatment in all
European countries of different types of structures, materials and products.

In Romania, the harmonization of Romanian with EU technical regulations

started in November 1997, when the Ministry of Regional Development
and Housing launched the Program of Romanian Codes (CR) for the
"Development of technical regulations for structures of civil and industrial

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constructions in 1997-2000 and harmonization with European Union’s
technical regulations”.

The elements of the CR Program have been defined, in principle, consistent

with Eurocodes 1-9, the basic idea being that they become National
Documents of Application (NDA), meaning that the content of an ENV
Eurocode should be entirely assumed in the Romanian version, with the
appropriate adjustments for our country. Thus, EC1 as ENV would become
CR1 - Fundamental Elements for design (basis of design) and construction
activities, EC2 - ENV would have been CR2 - Design of concrete
structures, etc.

Some shortcomings in the coordination of CR program and funds limitation

at that time restricted their continuous development, and it was no longer
possible to follow the European evolution of the EUROCODE program.
Therefore, instead of having the Romanian translation of Eurocodes
accompanied by the appropriate NDA, different norms were elaborated,
which did not bear the name of the chapter from the original Eurocode, or
from the CR program. For instance, in the Construction Bulletin volume
19-20 of 2001, the norm with the indicative NP 042-2000 was published,
entitled “Verification by calculation of metal construction elements and
their joints”, which is actually the ENV 1993-1-1 of EC3: "Calculation and
design of steel structures”, Part 1.1: “General rules and specifications for
buildings”. The same ambiguous situation appears in the calculation of
structures to seismic actions (EC8 and P100), the calculation of timber
structures (EC5 and the norms NP 005-1996 and NP 019-1997), etc.

To solve these problems and considering the European Commission

Recommendation of 11 December 2003 on the implementation and use of
Eurocodes for construction works and structural construction products with
relevance in the European Economic Area, according to art. 38 paragraph 2
of the Law no. 10/1995 on quality in constructions, with its subsequent
amendments, the Ministry of Transports, Construction and Tourism, now
entitled the Ministry of Transports and Infrastructure, issued the Order no.
620 of 29/04/2005, which states that:

Article 4. - (1) Eurocodes and national appendixes, approved as national

standards, are used as reference normative documents in the construction
technical regulations.

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(2) During the period 2005-2010, the national fund of technical regulations
for constructions will be reviewed to ensure the provisions of paragraph (1).

(3) During the period of Eurocodes implementation, they can be used when
treating issues for which no other national provision exits.
(Annex no. 1 – The Order no. 620/2005)

As a result, since March 2005 until now, a series of technical regulations in

constructions have been harmonized and amended. On 1 February 2009, the
Ministry of Regional Development and Housing published a list of these
technical regulations (ENV and NDA), which can be found in Annex no. 2.

I would like to mention that in Romania, a strategy of harmonizing the

national technical construction regulations to the European ones was
elaborated for each of the 6 main requirements of the construction activity:
- strength and stability
- safe operation
- fire safety
- hygiene, people’s health, restoration and protection of environment
- thermal insulation and waterproof, energy economy and heat retention
- protection against noise,
stipulated mainly by two acts of the EU Council, namely the Directive of
Public Works, 89 / 440 / EEC and the Directive on Construction Products
(DCP), 89 / 106 / EEC. We have attached, as an example, “The strategy of
harmonizing national technical construction regulations with European
regulations for fire safety” – Annex no. 3.