European Standards for Recreational Diving

European Standards for Recreational Diving were published in early 2004 and define the state of the art for scuba diver and instructor training and the operation of dive centres and resorts.

The standards were jointly developed over a five year period by diver training organisations, consumer representatives and government bodies under the auspices of the European Committee for Standardisation, also known as CEN. The objectives of these European Standards (also known as European Norms) are as follows:

For divers:

• to ensure a high level of quality and safety

• to create internationally recognised diver qualifications, so making it simple for divers to have their qualifications recognised internationally

For diving professionals:

• to provide defensible standards for the teaching and guiding of divers

• to provide scuba instructors with an internationally accepted qualification that will allow them to work easily across Europe

For dive centres and resorts:

• To specify safety-related guidelines indicating how the typical activities of a service provider should be conducted; including training, equipment hire, and the conduct of dive trips

Since the introduction of the standards, a need arose to have an independent, respected body audit training organisations that wished to claim compliance with the standards and confirm that they do in fact meet all of the relevant requirements.
As a result the EUF Certification Body was formed, a joint-venture of the European Underwater Federation (EUF) and the Austrian Standards Institute. The EUF Certification Body meets the requirements for certification bodies specified in the European Standard EN 45011.

Certification by the EUF Certification Body follows a stringent auditing process that allows successful training organisations to prove convincingly that their training programmes are in full conformity with the requirements defined in the European Standards on recreational diving services.

European Standard Level & Reference Number
Diver Level 1 Supervised Diver : EN 14153-1
Diver Level 2 Autonomous Diver : EN 14153-2
Diver Level 3 Dive Leader : EN 14153-3
Instructor Level 1 : EN 14413-1
Instructor Level 2 : EN 14413-2