Fire Doors in France: ERP Regulations and the Code du Travail

France's fire safety framework for fire doors depends heavily on how the building in question is classified, and it is worth being precise about which regulatory track applies before specifying a rating. Établissements Recevant du Public (ERP — buildings receiving members of the public) are subject to their own dedicated fire and panic safety obligations, verified as part of construction and operating authorisation. Workplaces that are not ERP — offices, workshops, warehouses — are instead regulated primarily through the Code du travail (Labour Code), which contains its own detailed fire safety provisions for places of work. High-rise buildings (immeubles de grande hauteur, IGH) sit outside both of these regimes and are subject to a distinct, dedicated set of requirements reflecting the additional risk that height introduces.

ERP: Buildings Receiving the Public

Any building constructed or operated as an ERP is subject to specific fire and panic safety obligations, intended to protect occupants, support early alarm and intervention, and limit material losses. ERP obligations apply across a wide range of building types — shops, cinemas, hospitals, schools, hotels, restaurants and more — and compliance is verified through the ERP authorisation and inspection process rather than through the Code du travail's workplace-specific provisions. Fire door and compartment door requirements within an ERP are set according to the specific ERP category and type classification of the building, which depends on both its use (type) and its size or occupant capacity (category).

Code du Travail: Non-ERP Workplaces

For workplaces that are not classified as ERP, the Code du travail sets out its own fire safety requirements under its provisions on incendies, explosions et évacuations (fires, explosions and evacuations). These provisions include height-triggered requirements: buildings whose top floor level sits more than 8 metres above external ground level are subject to enhanced structural fire stability and compartmentation requirements to account for the increased risk that height introduces, including requirements for stairway and lift enclosures using coupe-feu (fire-resistant) and pare-flammes (flame-retardant) rated doors of specified degrees, along with associated smoke ventilation provisions at the top of stairway enclosures. Doors and door hardware more generally are also addressed under the Code's provisions on portes et portails (doors and gates), covering matters such as safety systems for powered doors.

Degree-Based Rating Language

French fire safety regulation traditionally expresses fire resistance requirements in degrés (degrees) — for example, a requirement for a door coupe-feu de degré une heure (one-hour fire-resistant) or pare-flammes de degré une demi-heure (half-hour flame-retardant) — a notation rooted in the legacy French fire testing tradition rather than the EN 13501-2 E/EI system. As with Germany's T-class and Italy's REI notation, this degree-based language and the EN 13501-2 classification system describe compatible underlying fire resistance concepts, and a product tested to EN 1634-1 and classified under EN 13501-2 can be cross-referenced to the equivalent French degree rating for specification purposes — but the two notations are not interchangeable without that cross-reference, and specifiers should confirm which notation a given French fire safety document or authority is actually asking for.

Practical Guidance for Specifiers

• —Establish early whether the building is an ERP, a non-ERP workplace under the Code du travail, or an IGH — each follows a different regulatory track with different fire door requirements.
• —For non-ERP workplaces over 8m to the top floor level, expect enhanced stairway and lift enclosure door requirements (coupe-feu / pare-flammes, specified by degree) as a height-triggered obligation.
• —Confirm whether a French project document is specifying requirements in degré notation or EN 13501-2 notation, and request the appropriate cross-reference rather than assuming direct equivalence.
• —For ERP projects, confirm the building's specific ERP type and category classification before finalising fire door ratings, as requirements are set per classification rather than as a single blanket standard.
• —IGH projects should be treated as a distinct regulatory category from the outset, with fire door specification following the dedicated IGH provisions rather than either the ERP or Code du travail frameworks.

BÖLDT fire doors are tested to EN 1634-1 and classified to EN 13501-2, and our technical team can support French specifiers in cross-referencing EN classification to the degré notation used in ERP, Code du travail and IGH documentation.