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There currently exist a bewildering variety of fire safety regula-tions for railway vehicles in Europe. In practice, the complexity of the standards and legislation makes the approval process for railway vehicles immensely complicated. Awareness of this problem has grown at the EU level - and hence it is now planned to put uniform structures in place for fire safety regu-lations. These regulations are, however, likely to lead to very tough requirements for fire safety systems in rolling stock. In future, therefore, a compensatory approach will become more and more important. Here, demonstration of equivalence will become more and more attractive as a way of realizing creative and efficient vehicle concepts while safeguarding fire safety. In the paper presented the development of fire safety regula-tions for railway vehicles and possibilities and acceptance of implementation of compensatory measures are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]