In 1975, the Commission of the European Community decided on an action programme in construction based on Article 95 of the Treaty of Rome. The objectives were elimination of technical obstacles to trade and harmonisation of technical specifications.
For 15 years the Commission, with the help of a steering committee of EU member state representatives, oversaw the development of the Eurocodes programme, which led to the publication of a first-generation set of European codes in the 1980s.
In 1989 a special agreement between the
European Committee of Standardization (CEN) and the European Commission transferred preparation and publication of the Eurocodes to CEN, thus providing the Eurocodes with a future status of European Standards (EN).
The agreement specified that the Eurocodes were intended to serve as reference documents to be recognised by authorities of the member states for the following purposes.
- As a means for enabling building and civil engineering works to comply with the 'essential requirements' of the Construction Products Directive, particularly mechanical resistance and stability, and safety in case of fire.
- As a basis for specifying public construction and related engineering service contracts. This relates to Public Works Directive, which covers procurement by public authorities of civil engineering and building works with a current threshold of €5.25 million; and the Public Services Directive, which covers public procurement of services with current thresholds for government departments of €130,000 and €200,000 for others, including local authorities.
- As a framework for drawing up harmonised technical specification for construction products.
The structural Eurocodes have been available as European pre-standards (ENVs) for several years and by 2007 will all have been published as full ENs.