Officials at the European Parliament have prepared a briefing paper for Members of the European Parliament, MEPs, on the case for legislation for hotel fire safety. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/delegations/bg/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=EN&file=94130 The paper discusses various options but recommends a Directive. It is now too late to begin any legislative action in the current European Parliament, since elections are due next year. This paper has had an impact with MEPs and hotel fire safety is expected to be included in the set of issues to be raised by the new Parliament with the European Commission.

Hotel fire safety has been on and off the agenda in Brussels for 30 years but there has not been much progress since the European Council (the national governments) published a Recommendation in 1986 on fire safety in existing hotels. That document specified constructional features and was too inflexible to apply to many existing hotels. It was therefore ignored. In 2009 the European hotel industry published some guidance but its national member associations voted against its adoption. Since then there has been little progress. Aside from the risk to life, some large hotel chains are concerned that a major fire in another company’s hotel could damage their business. There are tens of thousands of hotels in Europe but far fewer than one thousand are fitted with sprinklers. The EFSN has a list of 500 sprinklered hotels on its web site so please try to use one of these hotels when you travel in Europe.