A directive 89/686/EEC from December 21st 1989 according the articles of individual protection obliges the membership countries of the European Union since July 1st 1992.

Laws according designing and producing articles of individual protection, as stated in this directive, are in particular base for the activities considering more safe work place and do not contravene the laws acording the use of these protective articles, as the organization of the health protection and the safety of the employees in their workplace.

This directive defines only the basic requirements according the articles of individual protection; for an easier way to check the accordance with these basic requirements, the main thing is to enable access to the harmonized european norms, according especially designing and producing the articles of individual protection and also defining the requirements and the methods of inquiring these requirements, since it is suggested that complying these norms signifies accordance of the articles with the basic requirements mentioned before.

Harmonized european norms are being defined by the private institutions and must keep their status of unobligatory documents; that's why European Comitee for Standardization (CEN) i European Comitee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) are competent institutions, which have been authorized to introduce the harmonized norms according to the general outlines ratificated on November 13th 1984 and according the co-operation between the Comission and these two institutions. 

For the purposes of the present directive, the harmonized norms (which are to be understood as the european norms) include also the technical requirements accepted by one or both of the institutions mentioned above, on the Comission's proposition, according to the Council's directive 83/189/EWG from March 28th 1983, stating the procedure of passing the information according technical norms and standards, changed with the directive 88/182/EEC and also suitably to the general outlines mentioned above.

The directive has been modified by the directives 93/68/EEC from July 22nd 1993, 93/95/EEC from October 29th 1993, 96/58/WE from September 3rd 1996 and also the disposition no. 1882/2003 from September 29th 2003.