| 1 | Angel Heras | ESP | 47,33 | Q |
| 2 | Sandor Ujhelyi | HUN | 47,51 | Q |
| 3 | Boyidar Konstantinov | BUL | 47,70 | Q |
| 4 | Jean-Jacques Fevrier | FRA | 47,80 | q |
| 5 | Stefano Malinverni | ITA | 48,06 |
| 1 | Sergey Lovachev | URS | 47,41 | Q |
| 2 | Toma Tomov | BUL | 48,04 | Q |
| 3 | Christoph Trappe | FRGF | 48,17 | Q |
| 4 | Andreas Kaufmann | SUI | 48,34 | |
| 5 | Gusztav Menczer | HUN | 48,54 |
| 1 | Ainsley Bennett | GBR | 47,63 | Q |
| 2 | Yevgeniy Lomtyev | URS | 47,73 | Q |
| 3 | Dusan Malovec | TCH | 47,77 | Q |
| 4 | István Takacs | HUN | 48,00 |