No, they don't distinguish hot and neutral.

I've never understood why that is important?

Incorrectly wired outlets do occur even in the US, so it seems like it's safer to take that possibility into account and just design the whole system to allow them to be interchanged (e.g. make power switches open/close both lines)

> I've never understood why that is important?

On appliances with a physical on-off switch, it's best to have the switch as close as possible to the cable, and on the 'hot' side. If there's a fault (wire touching the metal case) then the appliance is still safe with the switch 'off'.

Nowadays, I think everything would have double-pole switches anyway.

My experience of North American market consumer products is that they rarely have double-pole switches. A second pole would cost an extra half cent.

They are big, bulky and the 2 metal blades can't fold unlike in our american plug.

The american design is clearly superior.

>Schuko/Europlug is a very good system.

Perhaps it isn't common, but my experience with the sockets in Belgium was scary to me because there were two outlets embedded in a recess quite close to each other. Close enough I was afraid I'd shock myself trying to get a good grip on my plug and pull it out.

The exposed metal part of a Schuko socket is ground. You can touch it. The live contacts aren’t exposed at any stage of plugging/unplugging/... ever.

Electrically I don't see how that works since there's no interruption of the metal pin inserted into the socket like you see on a tip/ring headphone plug. Unless there's a mechanical process that energizes the live side of the inserted plug after a certain depth?

No mechanical process, the wall socket is depressed in the wall, so that by the time any metal prongs connect, the prongs are hidden.

You have to look at the plug in combination with the socket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko#Safety_features

That's odd. Could you describe it better since there is basically no way one would be under risk of getting a shock on a Schuko or Europlug without inserting a needle or something similar into the holes of the outlet.

We're just talking about two copper-lined holes next to each other for each power connection. There were two of those spaced closely together in a recess in the wall. They were close enough I could have touched the metal of one outlet while grabbing onto the power plug inserted into the other outlet. Since my power plug adapter is two copper-plated pins that mated with the holes and had no electrical break like you see on a tip/ring headphone jack I assume the exposed metal is live and the pin is live when inserted.

Perhaps there's a hidden mechanism that enables power after insertion? There was no switch for each outlet. I no longer remember if there was a switch for the pair of them but I don't think so as I was worried about getting shocked. This was in a Belgian hotel I visited a few years ago. Sorry I didn't take a picture.

I have the feeling that you are talking about european style socket with shallower than normal recess, ie. CEE 7/1. These sockets are sometimes used in Benelux countries for RCD protected circuits without PE, and should only be used for Class II devices which usually have CEE 7/16 “EuroPlug” with isolation sleeves and thus there is nothing to touch. On the other hand nothing prevents you from plugging essentially any other european plug in there which then becomes safety issue both because of the exposed live pins when (un)plugging and missing grounding. Similar sockets were (are?) also used in Russia.

This is probably the only case when CEE-style socket is not designed such that it is safe to use with any CEE-style plug that mechanically fits. In general I view the system as better design than BS 1363, because it solves the relevant safety issuess without overengineering and with reasonable degree of backward compatibility.

This almost sounds like an outlet without the cover installed?

Outlets next to each other, still without cover: https://www.entscheider.com/elektriker-und-elektroniker/wp-c...

Maybe even like this (seems to be older): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko#/media/Datei:Doppelstec...

Definitely not normal what you describe there. I'm glad you were cautious.