In article ,
Timothy Murphy writes:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

If you're referring to the standard french domestic socket
outlet, it's not defined which way around the live and neutral
are.

I'm really amazed at the low standard of Italian plugs.
It makes one wonder if the fuses in UK plugs are really necessary.
There are meant to be two kinds of 3-pin plugs, for power and lights,
but all the sockets I have seen accept either.

Has there been any EU attempt to define a European standard plug?

Several, all failed (except for standardising a 2-pin plug which
we don't use in the UK), although I may be out of date now.

Basically, no one is prepared to change, and everyone believes
(without any evidence to back it up) that theirs is the best system.
It's not just the plug -- the design of that is linked to the
design of the electrical distribution and protection systems, and
these vary widely across Europe. The UK BS1363 (13A) plugs and
sockets are the most recent of the established designs for mains
appliance plugs and sockets in the world (1946). All other systems
predate that, some by a very long way. BS1363 is also quite widely
adopted around the world, although in Europe, only in UK, Ireland
and Malta.

I loosely followed the first attempt. EEC (as it then was) placed
the requirement than the new plug/socket had to be different from
anything currently existing so no country derived unfair commercial
benefit (and there are good technical reasons for that too), and it
had to be no less safe than any of the existing schemes. That got
nowhere. Last I heard (which was probably at least 6 years ago),
there had been 5 attempts, all failed. In practice, standardisation
has taken place at the other end of the cable, i.e. the IEC mains
inlet connectors.

In the commercial arena, the british commando BS4343 plugs and
sockets have been universally adopted as no other European country
had anything much of an equivalent standard. Even the US have
adopted a variant of them (different ratings).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]