General Rental Conditions for the Rental Industry
ERA Secretariat
9 March 2010
The mission of the General Rental Conditions (GRC) committee of ERA is to improve rental industry performance by establishing guidelines and frameworks for general conditions applicable to rental companies and rental associations across the European countries on a voluntary basis.
After establishing and delivering a check-list and a framework for contract conditions for B to B, the committee started working at conditions for B to C.
Initial work consisted of gathering information from various association’s rental conditions. After a comparison of these conditions, the working group collated the clauses, while ensuring relevance and compliance with EU law.
In the course of its working relationship with CEN, a project of a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) on General Rental Conditions to Consumers, came to light. CWAs are CEN publications aimed at satisfying market demand more flexibly and rapidly than a traditional European Standard, but bearing a weight similar to the one of a standard
Preliminary statements:
- As a formally recognized European Standards Organization (ESO), CEN prepares standards and other consensus documents to facilitate economic activity in Europe;
- ERA prepares and maintains General Rental Conditions as a framework for the rental industry in order to provide guidance for its members and non-members as well;
- ERA wishes to see public consensus on the endorsement of Rental Conditions for B to C by a recognised European Standardization Organization, and a CEN Workshop would be a convenient and rapid way to secure this;
Status of existing standards and documents:
On 19th December 2006, the Commission issued mandate M/396 to CEN and CENELEC requesting the ESOs to review the existing body of harmonised standards for machinery in light of Directive 2006/42/EC and to develop the necessary new standards.
The machinery Directive and its associated standards are dealing essentially with the equipment, whilst the rental activity is primarily about service. Therefore, there is no European standard applicable to the equipment rental industry.
The ERA has prepared a framework for rental conditions for B to C made up from the benchmark of existing conditions among the national rental association’s members of ERA. Elaborating a CWA from this framework would help ERA to extend its application to developing markets, either through new rental associations or directly through the rental companies.
Project scope and objectives:
- To improve contractual relations between professionals and consumers (B2B relations are excluded from the scope of this project)
- To draft a CWA describing the standard terms and conditions for rental equipment supplied without an operator, so that this document can be used, by associations as well as by rental companies, as a reference point for developing their own standard terms and conditions for the rental of equipment to consumer customers within their own and in other European countries. This framework is not deemed to be used as a model contract.
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