What the regulation fixes
It sets the requirements a solid fuel local space heater has to meet before it can be placed on the European market: minimum seasonal efficiency, and maximum emissions of the substances it names. It also sets what information must be supplied with the appliance, which is why modern data sheets are more complete than older ones.
Crucially, it does not invent its own measurement. The values it compares against are the ones the appliance test standards produce. The regulation supplies the threshold; the standard supplies the number.
It also introduces a seasonal figure rather than only the figure taken at one operating point. That is a deliberate attempt to describe an appliance across a heating season instead of across a test run, and it is the more honest of the two figures for a buyer — which is exactly why listings quote the other one.
What it does not promise
It does not rank appliances. Everything legally on sale has cleared the same bar, so a compliance statement separates a compliant appliance from a non-compliant one and tells you nothing about how two compliant appliances compare. A badge is a floor, not a score.
It does not describe what leaves your flue. Every value behind it was recorded on a test rig, on prepared fuel, with the appliance held where the test requires. Wet wood, a throttled burn and a cold flue are not in the regulation’s scope and are the three things that actually decide what comes out of your chimney.
And it does not make an appliance suitable for a room. Efficiency is a ratio; sizing is a different question, and this site refuses to answer it.
The documents that sit beside it
It sits on top of the appliance test standards: the roomheater standard, the inset standard, the cooker standard and the pellet standard each supply the measurement for their own family.
Individual member states may impose requirements of their own, and Germany does. A German listing frequently prints a national stage designation next to the model name, and that designation is a different document with a different scope.
None of this touches installation. What the flue has to be, how far the appliance has to stand from combustible material, and whether it may be commissioned at all are questions for the manufacturer’s instructions and for the rules where you live.
Where it appears on this site
On every appliance family, because every appliance sold in the markets this site covers is subject to it. Where a listing prints a compliance statement and nothing else, the page reports the statement as what it is — a floor — and looks for the measured figures elsewhere in the documentation.
Where a maker publishes a seasonal efficiency as well as a nominal one, the page prints both and says which is which. That pair is the most useful thing on a modern data sheet and the least often quoted in a listing.
Questions that keep arriving by post
Does a compliant stove pollute less than a non-compliant one?
It cleared a threshold the other did not, measured on a rig. What leaves your flue depends far more on the moisture of the wood, how the fire is lit and whether the appliance is run at its intended setting than on which side of a threshold it sat in a laboratory.
Is a seasonal efficiency the same as the efficiency on the plate?
No. One describes the appliance across a heating season, the other at the single operating point a test held it at. The seasonal figure is the more useful of the two for a buyer, and the less often printed in a listing. Where a maker publishes both, this site prints both.
Can I still use an older appliance?
That is a question about the rules where you live, and about national transition arrangements rather than about this regulation, which governs placing appliances on the market. This site does not answer it, and points at the authority that does.
Last reviewed 22 September 2026