During the last two decades significant, but not in every aspect conclusive progress was done regarding the European harmonization of standards for temporary works equipment and in the field of unification of the legal requirements for working and occupational safety. These steps ahead result for the constructions under consideration and for the temporary works related methods on the building sites in a partly fundamental change of the boundary requirements not only for design, structural analysis and assessment, but also for the way of working on site. Aggravating to the extensive European regulations and directives, a multitude of National Application Documents and special requirements are to be obeyed. This inevitably results in additional work and in uncertainties developing, detailing and realizing of a concrete task. Open technical questions will be detected and answered only during the pilot-application of the new generation standards, questions related to the sphere of working and occupational safety, i.e. questions addressing the responsibility for working methods and working environment, will, in default of sufficient precise legislative guidelines, be led to a reasonable degree of certainty through the sentences of courts. The paper presented here tries to explain the development of the European standards during the last twenty years, highlights the differences between the hitherto and the future frame of requirements, point out the deficits and insufficiencies of the regulations and sketches a perspective for future work and development of these documents.