TempoLife › Features › Defibrillators and cardiac arrest response › rules-and-law
Who must have one, and where you stand legally
There is no EU rule requiring defibrillators in general, but there is one requiring first-aid arrangements proportionate to risk. What that means for an employer, what individual countries add, and the bystander's position if it goes wrong.
CPR in sixty seconds
- Unresponsive and not breathing normally? Gasping is not breathing. Treat it as a cardiac arrest.
- Call 112 (113 in Norway). Speaker on, phone on the floor. Stay on the line — the dispatcher will coach you.
- Push hard and fast in the centre of the chest: 5–6 cm in an adult, 100–120 per minute, letting the chest come all the way back up.
- Send somebody else for a defibrillator. Do not go yourself unless it is seconds away. Keep compressing.
- Turn the device on and do what it says. It decides whether to shock. After a shock, go straight back to compressions.
This is a reference written for bystanders, not a diagnosis, a training course or medical advice. It cannot tell you what is wrong with a particular person, and it does not replace the dispatcher on the other end of an emergency call — they can see what is near you and they will talk you through it. If you are worried about your own heart, or about a symptom, that is a conversation with a clinician rather than a page on a website.
What EU law actually says
No European Union instrument requires an employer or a venue to install a defibrillator. What EU law does require is first aid. The framework directive on safety and health at work obliges employers to assess risks and to take the necessary measures for first aid, fire-fighting and evacuation, adapted to the nature of the activity and the size of the undertaking, and to nominate and train the workers who will carry them out. The companion directive on workplace requirements adds that workplaces must be equipped with first-aid facilities appropriate to the activity and the number of workers. Whether a defibrillator is part of "appropriate" is a risk-assessment question, and for a large site, a leisure centre or a workforce of older manual workers the honest answer is usually yes.
National rules go further in places
Member states implement those directives in their own occupational-health law and some add specific venue requirements. Lithuania is the clearest example in this region: a health ministry order from 2019 makes automated external defibrillators mandatory in defined categories of public place where large numbers of people gather. Elsewhere the pattern is a mixture of sector rules — aviation and shipping requirements, sports federation conditions, municipal policy for its own buildings — plus strong recommendations rather than statute. Check your own national occupational health and safety authority before assuming either way.
The duty to help, which cuts the other way
People worry about the legal risk of intervening. In most of continental Europe, including the Nordic and Baltic countries, the law leans the opposite way: failing to assist a person in obvious mortal danger, when you could do so without serious risk to yourself, is itself a criminal offence in the penal codes of these countries. The commonly cited example in Germany is the offence of failing to render assistance; comparable provisions exist in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and Denmark. The practical reading is that helping is the legally safe direction of travel.
Being sued for doing CPR
The scenario that stops people — a rescuer sued for a broken rib — is not a documented pattern in this region. Bystanders act in an emergency, without payment, on a person who would otherwise die; national civil law is not hostile to that, and injuries such as rib fractures are recognised and accepted consequences of correct technique. This page is not legal advice and cannot be, but the honest summary is that hesitation costs lives every year in this region and litigation against lay rescuers does not.
If you own the device
The obligations that do land on you are the boring ones: keep it maintained and in date, keep the register entry accurate, make sure the people on site know where it is, and do not restrict access in a way that defeats the purpose. Nothing here requires a doctor's involvement — public-access defibrillators are sold and installed for use by untrained members of the public throughout this region, and no prescription or medical supervision is needed to own one.
Sources: Council Directive 89/391/EEC on safety and health at work (CELEX 31989L0391) · Council Directive 89/654/EEC on workplace requirements (CELEX 31989L0654) · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
Does the law require my workplace to have a defibrillator?
No EU rule requires one specifically. EU law requires first-aid measures proportionate to the risk, the activity and the size of the workplace, and national rules or sector requirements may go further, so the answer comes from your risk assessment and your national authority.
Can I be sued for doing CPR badly?
It is not a realistic concern in this region, and in most of these countries failing to help someone in mortal danger is itself an offence. This is general information rather than legal advice.
Do I need training or a licence to own a defibrillator?
No. Public-access defibrillators are designed for untrained bystanders and need no prescription or medical supervision. Training is strongly worth having; it is not a legal condition of ownership.
How the system around it works
The chain of survival, link by link
Recognition and a call, early CPR, early defibrillation, advanced care and recovery. What each link is actually worth, which one the public owns, and where the chain breaks in practice.
What the survival numbers actually say
Roughly one in ten survives an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and the spread between towns is wider than the spread between treatments. How to read the statistics without being misled by them.
National registers, and getting your device into one
A defibrillator the dispatcher cannot see barely exists. What a national register is, which one is the real one in each country, why registration is free, and the paid look-alikes to avoid.
Volunteer responder systems
Denmark, Sweden and Norway alert trained volunteers by phone to arrests near them — one to fetch the defibrillator, one to start compressions. How the systems work, who can join, and what happens when your phone goes off.
Where public defibrillators actually are
The green sign with the heart and the lightning bolt, the places that reliably have one, the cabinets that are locked and the ones that are not, and what to do when you have thirty seconds to decide whether to go looking.
Everything on this subject
Before the emergency, there is a long quiet stretch
Blood pressure, resting heart rate, movement and sleep are the part of this you can act on for years beforehand. TempoLife keeps them in one place, free to start.