BetrSichV Lift Inspection: Hauptprüfung and the ZÜS

By Mr. Sumeet Katariya, ElevatorPlus · Published 13 Aug 2026 · Last updated 13 Aug 2026  · ~10 min read · Compliance reviewed by Mr. Sumeet Katariya

In short: German lift inspection runs on two recurring events, the Hauptprüfung and the Zwischenprüfung. Both are carried out by a zugelassene Überwachungsstelle. The two-year figure everyone quotes is a legal ceiling, not a default setting. And the phrase most of the industry uses for the whole thing, "TÜV inspection", is wrong in a way that tells you how the rest of the obligation usually gets read.

Key takeaways

• Two years is a cap, not a schedule. Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 4.1 Satz 4 reads: "Die Prüffrist darf zwei Jahre nicht überschreiten." The interval itself is set by the employer under § 3 Absatz 6, in light of the maintenance regime under Anhang 1 Nummer 4.2.
• The Zwischenprüfung is a ZÜS inspection, not a service visit. Nummer 4.3 places it in the middle of the period between two Hauptprüfungen and states plainly that it is carried out by a zugelassene Überwachungsstelle.
• ZÜS is the legal category. TÜV is a brand. § 2 Absatz 14 defines zugelassene Überwachungsstellen by reference to Anhang 2 Abschnitt 1. Several bodies authorised as ZÜS carry no TÜV name at all.
• The Notfallplan is checked at every Hauptprüfung. Nummer 4.2 Buchstabe a requires the ZÜS to establish that the declaration of conformity and the Notfallplan are present, and that the content of the Notbefreiungsanleitung is plausible.
• Germany is not the European template. France runs a five-yearly contrôle technique. Italy a two-yearly verifica periodica. The Netherlands an inspection at most every eighteen months. The Lifts Directive harmonises none of it.

What this guide covers: why the common term is wrong · what a ZÜS legally is · the Hauptprüfung and the two-year ceiling · the Zwischenprüfung at the midpoint · inspection before commissioning and after modification · who owns the interval decision · how Germany compares with France, Italy and the Netherlands · FAQs.

The word almost everyone uses is the wrong one

Search in English for German lift compliance and the results say "TÜV inspection". Sales decks say it. Tender documents say it. We have written it ourselves, in earlier drafts, including some of ours before we checked it properly.

It is not a legal term. It is not even a single organisation.

TÜV is a shared trademark used by a group of separate, competing companies with different owners and different geographies. TÜV SÜD, TÜV Rheinland and TÜV NORD are not divisions of one another. They compete for the same work. Saying "the TÜV will inspect the lift" is roughly as precise as saying "the bank will process the payment".

Worse, it excludes bodies that do the same job under the same authorisation. DEKRA is a zugelassene Überwachungsstelle. DEKRA is not a TÜV. An operator who specifies "TÜV" in a procurement document has narrowed the field on a basis the regulation does not recognise.

The correct word is ZÜS. Every time.

This matters beyond vocabulary. The industry's shorthand treats the inspection as a service you buy from a famous supplier. The regulation treats it as a state-supervised verification with a legally defined actor, a legally defined trigger, and a legally defined maximum interval that the employer, not the inspector, is responsible for setting. Get the noun wrong and the rest of the reading tends to follow.

What a ZÜS actually has to be

§ 2 Absatz 14 BetrSichV is a single sentence: "Zugelassene Überwachungsstellen sind die in Anhang 2 Abschnitt 1 genannten Stellen." A pure referral. The substance sits in Anhang 2 Abschnitt 1 Nummer 1.

That provision defines a ZÜS as a body under § 2 Nummer 4 des Gesetzes über überwachungsbedürftige Anlagen, and then adds six further conditions on top of §§ 15 to 17 and § 20 of that Act. A ZÜS must hold liability insurance with cover of at least 2.5 million euro. It must be able to inspect all of the installations covered by the relevant section of Anhang 2, not a convenient subset. It must have a management that carries overall responsibility for inspections being performed in accordance with the regulation. It must run an effective quality management system with regular internal auditing. It must ensure that inspection staff are only given tasks that leave their impartiality intact.

And the sixth one is the interesting one.

A ZÜS must operate a remuneration system in which the pay of the people performing inspections depends neither on the number of inspections carried out nor on their results. Read that again in the context of a commercial maintenance market. The regulation has deliberately severed the financial link between the finding and the finder. That is the whole architecture in one clause: the ZÜS is not your contractor.

One more piece of vocabulary worth fixing while we are here. A lift in Germany is an überwachungsbedürftige Anlage, an installation requiring supervision, under § 2 Absatz 13, because Anhang 2 names it. That status is what pulls the ZÜS in. It is not a category that applies to most work equipment.

The Hauptprüfung, and what two years actually means

Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 4.1 is the recurring inspection clause. Lifts within Nummer 2 are to be inspected on a regular recurring basis by a zugelassene Überwachungsstelle. That inspection is the Hauptprüfung. It includes examination of the safety of the electrical installation, so far as that is necessary to assess safe use.

Then the sentence that gets quoted everywhere: "Die Prüffrist darf zwei Jahre nicht überschreiten."

Note what it does not say. It does not say the interval is two years. It says two years may not be exceeded.

The sentence immediately before it is the one that does the work. The intervals for recurring inspections are to be set by the employer under § 3 Absatz 6, taking into account the necessary maintenance measures under Anhang 1 Nummer 4.2. § 3 Absatz 6 requires the employer to determine and set the type, scope and frequency of inspections, and it says expressly, in its second sentence, that this also applies to lift installations. Intervals must be set so that the equipment can be used safely until the next scheduled inspection.

So the two-year figure is the outer boundary of a decision the operator has to make and be able to defend. A lift in a hospital, a lift in a high-rise residential block with heavy traffic, a lift in a dusty or corrosive environment: the reasoning that lands on twenty-four months for all three is the reasoning that will not survive scrutiny.

The regulation anticipates that it might not. § 16 Absatz 2 applies: at each recurring inspection it must also be established whether the intervals for the next inspections have been correctly set. Nummer 4.1 then gives the ZÜS a lever. If the ZÜS finds during an inspection that the interval has been set incorrectly, the employer has to shorten it in agreement with the ZÜS. If the employer disagrees with the shortening, the employer must obtain a decision from the competent authority.

The operator sets the interval. The ZÜS can force a review. The authority breaks a tie.

The Zwischenprüfung is a real inspection

Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 4.3 adds a second event. In addition to the inspection under Nummer 4.1, an inspection is to be carried out in the middle of the period between two Nummer 4.1 inspections. That is the Zwischenprüfung.

Its scope is narrower. Visual checks and simple functional checks of safety-related devices, plus inspection of selected safety-relevant components. § 14 Absatz 5 applies to the recording of it.

Its actor is not narrower. The final sentence of Nummer 4.3 states that this inspection is to be carried out by a zugelassene Überwachungsstelle.

This is the point most non-German operators miss. The Zwischenprüfung is not the maintenance visit with a different name. Maintenance is a separate obligation entirely, sitting in Anhang 1 Nummer 4.2, which requires the operator to take maintenance measures under § 10 having regard to the type and intensity of use. Two obligations, two actors, two records.

Run the arithmetic. If an operator sets the Hauptprüfung at the two-year ceiling, the Zwischenprüfung falls at twelve months. A ZÜS is therefore on site once a year, alternating between a full inspection and a midpoint one. Shorten the Hauptprüfung interval to eighteen months and the midpoint moves to nine.

That is worth planning around before it lands in a schedule.

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Before it runs at all, and after it changes

Recurring inspection is only half of Abschnitt 2. Nummer 3 covers the other half.

Under Nummer 3.1, lifts within Nummer 2 Satz 1 must be inspected by a ZÜS before being placed in service for the first time. Under Nummer 3.2, they must be inspected by a ZÜS before being returned to service after a prüfpflichtige Änderung, a modification requiring inspection.

Nummer 3.3 sets out what that inspection establishes. Whether the technical documentation, such as the EC declaration of conformity and the Notfallplan, is present, and whether the content of the Notbefreiungsanleitung is plausible. Whether the installation was erected in accordance with the regulation and can be used safely. And whether the electrical installation is compliant and, where necessary, the onward routing of the emergency call to a permanently manned location is assured.

An inspection following a modification may be limited to establishing that the installation was modified in accordance with the rules and functions safely.

The documentation limb recurs. Nummer 4.2 Buchstabe a applies the same test at every Hauptprüfung: the documents needed for the inspection, in particular the EC declaration of conformity and the Notfallplan, must be present, and the content of the Notbefreiungsanleitung must be plausible.

A lift can be mechanically faultless and still fail on a missing document.

The interval is a decision, and someone has to own it

Anhang 1 Nummer 4 carries the operator-side obligations, and it runs from 4.1 to 4.6. Most English-language summaries stop at the first one.

Nummer 4.2 is the maintenance duty already mentioned. Nummer 4.3 prohibits equipment in the immediate area of the installation that could endanger safe operation. Nummer 4.5 restricts access to the Triebwerksraum to authorised persons. Nummer 4.6 requires the operator to check the installation regularly for obvious defects that could impair safe use, which is an operator duty entirely separate from anything the ZÜS does. Nummer 4.4 deals with paternoster lifts, which is a small population and a large body of rules.

Put those alongside § 3 Absatz 6 and the shape of the German regime becomes clear. The state does not hand the operator a schedule. It hands the operator a duty to reason, a ceiling, and an independent body that will check the reasoning.

In practice, the gap we see most often is not a missed inspection. It is an operator who can produce the ZÜS certificates but cannot produce the risk assessment that explains why the interval is what it is, or who set it, or when it was last revisited.

Germany is not the European template

Operators expanding across Europe tend to assume the German model generalises. It does not. Every one of these regimes is national, and they do not resemble each other.

Four countries, four intervals, four categories of inspecting body, four sets of paperwork. None of it comes from Brussels.

Directive 2014/33/EU, the Lifts Directive, is a market-access instrument. Article 1(1) applies it to lifts permanently serving buildings and constructions and to the safety components listed in Annex III. It governs placing on the market, putting into service, conformity assessment, CE marking and notified bodies. It contains no periodic inspection regime and no maintenance interval. The closest it comes is Annex I point 6.2, which requires each lift to be accompanied by instructions covering maintenance, inspection, repair and periodic checks, and a logbook in which repairs and periodic checks can be recorded. What goes in the logbook, and how often, is left to national law.

One forward-looking note, since it is being misreported. Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, the Machinery Regulation, applies from 20 January 2027 and repeals Directive 2006/42/EC from the same date. The original Official Journal text said 14 January 2027; the corrigendum published on 4 July 2023 changed it to the 20th. Article 2(2) of the Regulation contains no exclusion for lifts. What keeps lifts out is Article 9, the lex specialis clause, read with Article 1(3) of the Lifts Directive. Lifts inside Article 1(1) of Directive 2014/33/EU stay under the Lifts Directive. The lifting appliances that Directive excludes under Article 1(2), including appliances with a speed not exceeding 0.15 m/s, construction site hoists, escalators and moving walks, move from the Machinery Directive to the Machinery Regulation on that date.

None of that changes a single BetrSichV interval.

Frequently asked questions

What is the maximum interval between two Hauptprüfungen in Germany?

Two years. Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 4.1 Satz 4 BetrSichV states that the inspection interval may not exceed two years. It is a ceiling, not a default. The actual interval is set by the employer under § 3 Absatz 6.

Who carries out the Zwischenprüfung?

A zugelassene Überwachungsstelle. Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 4.3 says so in its final sentence. It is not the maintenance contractor, and it is not an operator self-check.

Is "TÜV inspection" the correct term for the German lift inspection?

No. The regulation uses zugelassene Überwachungsstelle, usually abbreviated to ZÜS. TÜV is a trademark shared by several separate and competing companies, and there are bodies authorised as ZÜS that carry no TÜV name, DEKRA among them.

What legally is a ZÜS?

§ 2 Absatz 14 BetrSichV defines zugelassene Überwachungsstellen as the bodies named in Anhang 2 Abschnitt 1. That section defines them as bodies under § 2 Nummer 4 of the Gesetz über überwachungsbedürftige Anlagen, subject to six additional conditions including at least 2.5 million euro of liability cover and a remuneration system independent of the number and the results of inspections.

Who decides the inspection interval?

The employer, under § 3 Absatz 6, taking into account the maintenance measures required under Anhang 1 Nummer 4.2. The second sentence of § 3 Absatz 6 states expressly that this applies to lift installations.

What happens if the ZÜS thinks the interval is wrong?

Under Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 4.1, the employer must shorten the interval in agreement with the ZÜS. If the employer does not agree with the shortening, the employer must obtain a decision from the competent authority.

Does a lift need a ZÜS inspection before it is first used?

Yes. Anhang 2 Abschnitt 2 Nummer 3.1 requires inspection by a ZÜS before first commissioning, and Nummer 3.2 requires it again before return to service after a modification requiring inspection.

Does the Lifts Directive set an inspection interval?

No. Directive 2014/33/EU covers placing on the market and putting into service of new lifts and safety components. Periodic in-service inspection is a matter of national law, which is why Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands all differ.

The German regime is stricter than the two-year headline suggests and less prescriptive than operators expect. The state sets a ceiling and a mandatory midpoint, then makes the operator justify everything underneath it.

Which means the record that matters is not the certificate. It is the chain: the risk assessment that fixed the interval, the maintenance history that fed into it, the Hauptprüfung and Zwischenprüfung dates that follow from it, and the documents the ZÜS will ask to see at each one. Held per installation, not per portfolio.

And the word is ZÜS.

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Related reading

• Elevator service software built for European contractors
• Lift Safety Regulations: What Operators Are Actually Required To Do
• The Complete Lift Maintenance Checklist for 2026
• Europe's Fragmented Lift Markets: Italy and Spain in 2026

About the author. Mr. Sumeet Katariya is the founder of ElevatorPlus, the Elevator Business Operating System used by 200+ elevator companies across 20+ countries. Compliance reviewed by Mr. Sumeet Katariya.

Sources: BetrSichV Anhang 2, Prüfvorschriften für überwachungsbedürftige Anlagen · BetrSichV Anhang 1, Besondere Vorschriften für bestimmte Arbeitsmittel · BetrSichV § 2 Begriffsbestimmungen · BetrSichV § 3 Gefährdungsbeurteilung · BetrSichV § 16 Wiederkehrende Prüfung · Code de la construction et de l'habitation, art. R. 134-11 · DPR 30 aprile 1999 n. 162 (Normattiva) · Warenwetbesluit liften 2016 · Directive 2014/33/EU on lifts and safety components for lifts · Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 on machinery, consolidated text

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