Hello Steve, i totally agree with you on the the off-topic..this is, in my opinion, one of the strenghts of the knowledge building in this community...
Anyway, you´re right when you say that the EU are almost always ahead on regulatory requirements... actually, the regulatory requirements of medical devices in the worls are gearing towards the EU model, as can be seen by the work of the Global Harmonization Task Force... even the EUA, which has a fundamental difference in approach, are slowly turning to the EU model (but it might time some time).
One interesting point regarding particulars is that not all of them will be aligned with the third edition..because some might be cancelled! IEC posted a internal rule on the development of particulars that says taht if a particular doesn´t reach CDV (comittee draft fot vote) stage at the beginning of 2008, then the standard will be revoked. This is because some particulars standard writing groups weren´t active in developing the new edition and IEC felt this was because of lack of interest.
So, complementing my complementation to the question from Temu, i don´t think they´ll wait for every particular to be published, because they don´t even know how many particulars will remain.
Cheers.