The European standard family and its basis

The Eurocodes as European unified design rules for structures are part of the European Standard Family comprising also product standards, testing standards, standards for execution, European Technical Approvals and European Technical Approval Guidelines.A key feature of all these standards is consistency that has been obtained by consistent definitions of material and product properties and by basing any calculative way of defining structural properties on test evaluations.As a consequence all rules in Eurocode 3 are justified by test evaluations with a standardised method that introduced full transparency into the harmonisation works and allowed new innovative design approaches.Some examples for determining characteristic values of actions and combination factors for actions as well as for determining characteristic values and design values of resistances, in particular for the rules for choice of material to avoid brittle fracture, the harmonisation of various types of stability checks and the new interpretation of the plate buckling rules highlight the benefits of the standardised evaluation method.