THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community, and in particular Article 100 thereof;
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission;
Whereas the Council Directive of 26 July 1971(1) on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to textile names lays down provisions on labelling based on the fibre composition of textile products;
Whereas the methods used for official tests in the Member States to determine the fibre composition of textile products should be uniform, as regards both the pre-treatment of the sample and the quantitative analysis of the product;
Whereas Article 13 of the abovementioned Council Directive provides that the sampling and analytical methods to be used in all Member States for the purpose of determining the fibre composition of products will be specified in separate Directives; whereas under these circumstances, the Council adopted in its Directive of 17 July 1972(2) on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to certain methods for the quantitative analysis of binary fibre mixtures, provisions concerning the preparation of test samples and test specimens which are applicable to ternary fibre mixtures;
Whereas the object of this Directive is to lay down provisions governing the quantitative analysis of ternary fibre mixtures;
Whereas the particular methods relating to the analysis of certain binary mixtures are described in detail in the Directive of 17 July 1972; whereas present experience does not permit the specification of a single standard procedure as yet; whereas several variants must be proposed for the selective dissolution of the components;
Whereas general rules valid for the analysis of all ternary mixtures must however be worked out; whereas the object of these rules is to specify the various methods which could suitably be applied and the method of calculating the percentage composition for each variant;
Whereas technical specifications must be adapted rapidly to keep pace with technical progress; whereas to this end the procedure laid down in Article 6 of the Directive of 17 July 1972 should be applied;
HAS ADOPTED THIS DIRECTIVE: